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Winslow Homer, one of the most important figures in early American art, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 24, 1836 . His descendants had made New England their home for over 200 years. Encouraged by his parents and two brothers, to pursue an artistic career he became an apprentice in the lithographic firm of J.H. Bufford at age nineteen.

With very little formal training, Homer worked as an illustrator for many of the most prestigious publications of his day. In 1859 Winslow Homer moved to New York City, to work as Harper’s Weekly leading illustrator. Harper’s Weekly, the leading magazine at that time, employed him to chronicle the Civil War.

In 1866, he traveled to France where he spent ten months. On his return to the United States, Homer settled in New York, where he lived for the next thirteen years. In 1872, he moved to the famous Tenth Street Studio Building, home to many Hudson River School artists. During the 1870s, Homer explored a variety of subjects, including scenes of rural life and recreational activities as well as themes of childhood. One of his most famous paintings “Snap the Whip”, which he did in several mediums and styles. It was during his 1873 stay in Gloucester that he first worked in watercolor. He would use this medium for the rest of his career, creating some of the finest watercolors produced in America during his era. In 1874, he exhibited for the first time at the American Society of Painters in Watercolor, three years later he became a member.

From 1881 to 1882 during a second trip to Europe, he bypassed Paris for a stay in England. Near Tynemounth, on the coast of the North Sea at the small fishing village of Cullercoats, here he began doing scenes, harsher in tone, of figures struggling heroically in landscape. There he worked almost exclusively in watercolor.

After his return to America, he settled permanently in the seclusion of Prout's Neck, a remote area on the coast of Maine. He strove not only for solitude but also or the closest approximation he could find in the United States to that same English coast. At Prout's Neck, he was able to indulge his love of the outdoors, his fascination with the moods of the weather and the people in the landscape. He traveled all over for seascapes, boating and sporting scenes and also made several trips to Caribbean Sea locations where he did a number of marine scenes ominous in tone. In watercolors created on these trips, he conveyed the brilliant light and vibrant colors of the tropics.

Winslow Homer never married and in 1910 he died in Prout’s Neck.