Upcoming Exhibits

IN A PLACE BY HIMSELF: THE GRAPHIC WORLD OF WINSLOW HOMER

June 26 through November 14, 2010
The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Winslow Homer's death. In recognition of the fact that this most iconic of all American artists spent the second half of his career right here on Saco Bay, the Saco Museum is pleased to present this celebration of his work as a graphic artist. "In A Place By Himself: The Graphic World of Winslow Homer"--including prints from the collections of the Dyer Library and Saco Museum, the Farnsworth Art Museum, the University of Maine Museum of Art, and private collections--is on view at the Saco Museum through November 14, 2010.

Though Winslow Homer is known today as perhaps the greatest American painter of all time, he actually began his career as a printmaker. He apprenticed with lithographer John H. Buffard in Boston in the 1850s, and from the 1860s into the 1880s, Homer produced finely crafted wood engravings for the pictorial press, including publications like Harper's Weekly and Appleton's Journal, among others. His remarkable images are alternatively poignant, witty, romantic, and thought-provoking, capturing the characters and contradictions of 19th-century America.

After settling on Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Maine, Homer's career as a graphic artist came full-circle, with a series of dramatic, large-scale etchings that celebrate the subject for which he became best remembered: the ceaseless force of the Atlantic. The Saco Museum is pleased to include a selection from these late etchings in this exhibition, on loan from the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine: Eight Bells (1889), The Life Line (1884), and The Perils of the Sea (1888).

Presentation of this exhibition coincides with the completion of a searchable online database of Homer's graphics, conceived and executed by the Portland Museum of Art, Maine (PMA), with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maine Humanities Council, the Margaret E. Burnham Charitable Trust, and the Simmons Foundation. The database will premiere in conjunction with the PMA's exhibition "Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place," on view June 5 through September 6, 2010. Visitors to the exhibition at the Saco Museum will also have computer access to this new and unprecedented resource for exploring Winslow Homer’s career as a graphic artist.

This exhibition was made possible by a grant from Saco & Biddeford Savings Institution.


Photo: Winslow Homer (1836-1910), "Eight Bells," 1889, etching, 16 1/8 x 21 7/8. Farnsworth Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1943.