Art History News

Thursday, November 13, 2025

Picasso Memory and Desire

Museo Picasso Málaga

14 November 2025 – 12 April 2026

The Museo Picasso Málaga is presenting the exhibition Picasso Memory and Desire. Centering on the oil painting Studio with Plaster Head executed by the artist in 1925, it explores the complex relationship between images and the divergences of the modern subject through the work of Picasso and his contemporaries.
The exhibition brings together more than one hundred works by key figures of 20^th-century art, such as Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray and René Magritte, as well as interpretations of Picasso's work by Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.
Curated by Eugenio Carmona, professor of art history at the University of Malaga, and sponsored by Fundación Unicaja, the exhibition presents a revealing dialogue between memory and desire, historical time and modernity, and the way in which subjectivity transforms cultural symbols.

A visitor in front of Studio with Plaster Head at the "Picasso Memory and Desire"
© Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Jesús Domínguez
To download the image, click on it

Picasso Memory and Desire takes its starting point from the inspiring and complex painting Studio with Plaster Head (1925), a work that greatly impressed Dalí and Lorca and one considered to represent a "dividing line" in Picasso's output and the evolution of his artistic personality. This is both a research project and an exhibition proposal that explores the relationship between images, the divergences of the modern subject and the experiencing of different historical periods within a single cultural present. In synergy with the Surrealist spirit, Picasso’s painting reveals how an era is not a fixed mental universe but a complex articulation of cultural references, accumulated life experiences and expectations of future action.

The exhibition’s argument is generated by a painting executed by the artist in 1925: Studio with Plaster Head, a multifaceted work that Picasso transformed into both a psychic emblem of the divided subject and a metaphor for a past that becomes present in response to the demands of desire. For Eugenio Carmona, the exhibition's curator, it is thus a meta-painting that reflects a tension between desire and memory. Sponsored by Fundación Unicaja, Picasso Memory and Desire is on display at the Museo Picasso Málaga from 14 November 2025 to 12 April 2026.

"Picasso Memory and Desire" Exhibition at the Museo Picasso Málaga
© Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Jesús Domínguez
To download the image, click on it

THE DIALECTIC BETWEEN MEMORY AND DESIRE IN MODERN ART

In the 1920s and 1930s European society developed through a series of powerful and dramatic paradoxes. The devastating implementation of colonial rule continued, while extreme nationalism would ultimately and lethally lead from one war to another. Despite this, many men and women transformed their mindsets and social values in pursuit of a liberating emancipation, and Modern Art extended through broad social circles. At the same time, however, it began to be challenged by the emerging authoritarian political regimes. The dialectic between permanence and change was incessant. The present relocated the memory of a past that continued to exist in everyday life while at the same time, new ways of living and thinking fuelled a continual desire for transformation. Memory and desire.

The myth of technical and scientific progress provoked doubts, but this did not prevent a continued analysis of the "self" from being strongly encouraged, accompanied by an aspiration to reassess inherited identities. The subject aspired to redefine itself. Albeit with contradictions, Surrealism permeated the entire creative milieu in an extensive manner. The dynamic relationship between memory and desire showed that the present was not a frozen instant but a continuous flow of interactions. The complex dialogue between everything experienced and everything yet to be experienced was the driving force of existence. Memory was not a mere archive of the past; it was reactivated and updated to the present through the demands of desire.

The revelatory effectiveness of the icons created by Picasso influenced the Modern Art of his time. In this sense, Giorgio de Chirico can be seen as a precedent, although the two artists’ proposals were substantially different. From the perspective of the present exhibition, what Picasso created was remote from and even challenged the concepts of the "return to order" and "modern classicism"; rather, he was proposing the sum of different periods in a single present. In that historical context and with this work, Picasso closed the cycle of his relationships with the so-called "return to order" and with his classical period. Moreover, by making the antique bust an emblem of the present, both he and the modern artists around him were questioning the very notions of "return to order" and "modern classicism."

"Picasso Memory and Desire" Exhibition at the Museo Picasso Málaga
© Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Jesús Domínguez
To download the image, click on it

STUDIO WITH PLASTER HEAD

Studio with Plaster Head, painted by Pablo Picasso in the summer of 1925, uniquely expresses this historical situation. In it, the artist presents a powerful series of iconic signs that contain a revealing psychomachy. As Eugenio Carmona observes: “To look at Studio with Plaster Head is to locate oneself in front of a complex web of signs. Powerful icons demand attention in their effort to become emblems. It is not inappropriate to refer to Picasso's painting as a painting of signs."

Functioning as a generative element of the work as a whole, Picasso included the covert evocation of his father, a drawing teacher within the official Fine Arts system. This also implied a reference to Picasso's own training within that system. For the artist, this was the place of memory. But why bring these references into the present, in 1925? The plaster bust at the centre of the work is not related to anachronism nor to a "return to order," but rather to the presence of the past that is redefined from the present. Furthermore, in its displacement of time and meaning, the bust disturbingly explodes into contrasting profiles, projecting a mysterious shadow and interrogating us with its penetrating gaze.

Picasso developed the concepts he initially presented in Studio with Plaster Head in a fascinating series of works, expanding them across his output and transforming them over the decades. The bust became an emblem. The "split faces" and the "profile in shadow" were developed as vehicles for a simultaneously revealing and disturbing figurative and visual interplay. These were proposals that incessantly evolved around themselves. For the artist, the continuous succession of these vanishing lines was the locus of "desire," understood not only as an erotic drive but above all as an intense affirmation of the will to live.

"Picasso Memory and Desire" Exhibition at the Museo Picasso Málaga
© Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Jesús Domínguez
To download the image, click on it

KEY FIGURES IN 20TH-CENTURY ART

The redefinition of the classical plaster bust, the ideogrammatic play of split faces and the sense of alienation produced by shadows were not exclusive to Picasso's art. Giorgio de Chirico had anticipated the use of some of these devices and was still employing them in his painting in the 1920s. De Chirico's figures are inert and deny a view to the exterior. Picasso's explode in their inner life and emphasise the drive of the gaze. De Chirico poses a paradox. Picasso shows a conflict. In addition to the names of these two artists, reference should be made from 1924 onwards to that of Fernand Léger, who introduced the plaster bust and the profile in shadow at the same time they appear in Picasso's works.

Studio with Plaster Head was reproduced in several magazines of the time and soon attracted the interest of numerous contemporary artists, although the dialectic between memory and desire was already strongly present in all of them. In 1926 Salvador Dalí thus appropriated Picasso's icons and gave them new meaning by relating the bust to the Christian iconography of decapitation. He used it at the start of his paranoid-critical method to formalise his self-portrait and locate the keys to his psychomachy. The "split faces" in his work express the tensions surrounding the identity of modern art, in a youthful dialogue and polemic with Federico García Lorca. In turn, the latter shared with Dalí the references of the bust, the shadow and the splitting of the face as signs of the conflicts of the amorous self. Lorca and Dalí’s interpretation of Picasso constitutes one of the key themes around which this exhibition project is articulated.

In his constant interaction with Picasso, Jean Cocteau made the bust and split faces part of his reflection on the contemporary survival of the Orpheus myth. Orpheus appears here as a metaphor for the link between love, death and creation, and at the same time as a model of self-representation. Man Ray manipulated the image of Venus to question the relationships between eroticism and culture, shifting the semiology of the bust toward the timeless petrification of its own image. From this perspective, his work opens up to a field of questions about the self, memory and desire. Influenced by Picasso and Cocteau, Carl van Vechten transferred these motifs to the context of the “Harlem Renaissance” and the vague nègre, photographing the Senegalese model François “Féral” Benga, among others.

Felice Casorati and Jean Metzinger located the bust in domestic settings treated as artistic spaces, while René Magritte took up Picasso and Cocteau’s ideas and made the motif a recurring one from 1925 up to his series La Mémoire. In Cocteau’s work the bust is associated with the feminine, with memory and with trauma, characterised by arbitrary wounds that reveal the paradox of fragility and permanence.

In the field of photography, Walker Evans and André Kertész made their own shadow an icon. By experiencing the street as a dreamlike space and by using female shop mannequins as “involuntary sculptures”, Brassaï, Dora Maar and again Kertész replicated and reinterpreted the classical bust, blurring the boundaries between the everyday and the artistic while highlighting the alienation of gender codes. Brassaï and Dora Maar also documented Picasso's sculpture studio in Boisgeloup as a modern transformation of academic plaster cast galleries.

Gender issues were further explored by Eileen Agar and Claude Cahun. In dialogue with nature and with a classical bust of a contemporary male figure, Agar reversed the roles assigned to women in Surrealism, transforming them into active agents of the gaze. In collaboration with Marcel Moore, Cahun created a "double bust" that has become a pioneering reference in transgender art, a radical reflection on identity.

Finally, Juan Gris, like Picasso, incorporated the classical bust into still lifes that functioned as homages to the arts, introducing the soft forms later revisited by Dalí. In the context of Spain, José Moreno Villa, Gregorio Prieto, Joaquín Peinado, Benjamín Palencia and Enrique Climent—all representatives of the New Art—understood the reference to classical art not as an anachronism or surrender but as a living dialogue between the strata of time.

"Picasso Memory and Desire" Exhibition at the Museo Picasso Málaga
© Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Jesús Domínguez
To download the image, click on it

LE CHEF-D’OEUVRE INCONNU

In 1924, while on holiday in Juan-les-Pins, Picasso produced the drawings known as the "Constellations," in which dots of ink connected by fine lines form guitars and mandolins. In 1931 some of these drawings were reproduced as woodcuts by Georges Aubert and published by Ambroise Vollard and Blaise Cendrars to illustrate Honoré de Balzac's famous story Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu [The unknown masterpiece] (1831). The publication also includes other drawings by Picasso executed between 1927 and 1931 and various etchings on the subject of the artist and his model.

For this reason, the exhibition includes an installation in which the voice-over of Malaga-born baritone Carlos Álvarez narrates fragments of this work in several languages whilewhile visitors proceed along a corridor that displays the “Constellations” from Sketchbook 30 and the drawings of double heads and faces from Sketchbook 31, which was used to illustrate the edition of this text.

By happy coincidence—or perhaps an irony of fate—Honoré de Balzac's famous story has become linked to Picasso’s Studio with Plaster Head given that, in a sense, the painting can also be considered an unknown masterpiece: little known, rarely exhibited, yet fundamental with regard to Picasso's transition between Classicism, Cubism and the first signs of Surrealism. The installation accompanying the exhibition not only engenders a dialogue between word and image but also illuminates this singular painting which, like Balzac's story, contains the mystery of its creation and the enigma of a barely revealed work.

The Museo Picasso Málaga would like to thank Fundación Unicaja for its invaluable sponsorship, as well as all the museums, institutions and private collections that have collaborated on the exhibition Picasso Memory and Desire, notably the Museum of Modern Art, the Musée du Louvre, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musée national d'art moderne, the Musée national Picasso-Paris, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, the Museu Picasso Barcelona, the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, the Musée Magritte, the Museu Coleção Berardo, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Nahmad Contemporary, Galería Guillermo de Osma, Lee Miller Archives, Colección Arte ABANCA, the Museo Casa Natal Picasso, the Museo de Málaga, and the Museo Gregorio Prieto.

Catalogue and associated activities
To accompany the exhibition Picasso Memory and Desire, the Museo Picasso Málaga has produced a comprehensive catalogue that features texts by the curator and the curatorial team. Published in Spanish and English, it has over 300 pages lavishly illustrated with works of art, documents and photographs that provide a deeper understanding of the multiple perspectives of this project. The exhibition also features an audio guide available in Spanish and English, offering a detailed commentary on a carefully chosen series of key exhibits.

Monday, November 10, 2025

Christie's 21st Century Evening Sale, November 19, 2025

Christie's Announces The Edlis | Neeson Collection Headlining the 21st Century Evening Sale

Edlis | Neeson Collection | ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) The Last Supper, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm.) Executed in 1986. Estimate: $6,000,000-8,000,000

Christie's is honored to announce The Edlis | Neeson Collection, an exemplary group of post-war and contemporary art and design that will headline Christie's 21st Century Evening Sale in New York on Wednesday, November 19, 2025. The collection hails from the legendary collectors and renowned philanthropists Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, presenting important examples by many of the late twentieth century's most coveted names, including Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Diego Giacometti, Richard Prince, George Condo and John Currin. The selection featured within the 21st Century Evening Sale and Post-War and Contemporary Day Sale is expected to realize more than $40 million, with additional works scheduled to be offered in December and throughout 2026.

Sara Friedlander, Christie's Deputy Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarks, “We are thrilled to be entrusted with The Edlis | Neeson Collection, an exquisite array of best-in-class art and objects from the post-war period's most important artists and designers. Stefan Edlis was a rare force in the art world, a passionate and visionary collector, generous to the core. His remarkable life story equipped him with an unerring conviction in the power and necessity of art to challenge, question, and expand our horizons. Having escaped unimaginable persecution in Nazi-era Germany, Mr. Edlis emigrated to America penniless. Testament to his entrepreneurial prowess and determination, he soon found success in industry and turned his focus to building a visionary art collection. Together with his loving wife Gael Neeson, the couple became post-war America's archetypal collectors. Fueled by the belief that art could quite literally save a life, Edlis and Neeson immersed themselves in the work of the late twentieth century's most daring and iconoclastic artists. A true connoisseur, the result is one of the foremost private collections in America today: every work was carefully scrutinized before its purchase, resulting in a grouping of unparalleled quality, coherence, and art historical importance. We look forward to presenting the market with this collection - a rare and daring selection that captures the humor, resilience, and humanity of the inimitable Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson.”

Testament to the singular foresight that determined the success of Edlis and Neeson's collecting, the selection within the 21st Century Evening Sale includes stellar examples by artists who have become established canonical figures. Andy Warhol's The Last Supper (1986), executed in an electric yellow hue, leads the group, which also includes

a major 2004 canvas by Ed Ruscha,

an outstanding 2010 work by George Condo and

a masterwork by John Currin.

Alongside fine art, the sale will feature a coveted bronze console table by Diego Giacometti, a nod to the elegant harmony between the contemporary and the classical that surrounded Edlis and Neeson at home.

Christie's is honored to present Collector/Connoisseur: The Max N. Berry Collections; a sale series spanning a multitude of categories—both auction and private sales—which will take place over the course of months. Sales begin this November in New York's 20/21 Fall Marquee Week, including four important works by Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti in the 20th Century Evening Sale on Monday November 17, 2025.

Christie's New York Presents Collector/Connoisseur: The Max N. Berry Collections

ALEXANDER CALDER (1898-1976) Acrobats, inscribed 'Calder' (in wire), wire and wood, 34.3/4 x 17 x 7 in. (88.3 x 43.2 x 17.8 cm.) Executed circa 1929. Estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000 Acrobats is an exceptional example by Alexander Calder (estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000), which relates to the circus, among the artist's most celebrated subjects, and is the first wire-figure sculpture by the artist to come to market since 2018. Another highlight by Calder, Untitled (estimate: $1,500,000-2,000,000) is a rare hanging mobile dating to the late 1930s which invokes Calder's adept use of another medium: wood. The Giacometti works in the selection include a bronze, Buste d'homme (Diego) (estimate: $5,000,000-8,000,000) and a painting, Nature morte dans l'atelier (estimate: $1,500,000-2,500,000). Together, these stand as exquisite examples of the artist's deeply personal and favorite motifs, the cramped confines of his studio and the dramatic contours of his brother's face.

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Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale November 17, 2025

Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale is a richly textured compilation of the most highly prized masterpieces from masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Across the 62-lot sale are best-in-class objects by canonical legends including David Hockney, Claude Monet, Fernand Léger, Richard Diebenkorn, Lucian Freud, Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, J.M.W. Turner, Marc Chagall, John Singer Sargent, and many more. Exceptional offerings hail from the most esteemed private and institutional collections from around the world. including: Elaine: The Collection of Elaine Wynn, Birth of the Modern: The Arnold and Joan Saltzman Collection, Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Collector/Connoisseur: The Max N. Berry Collections, In Pursuit of Light: The Collection of Carol and Terry Wall, and Property from the Bill and Dorothy Fisher Collection Sold to Benefit The Community of Marshalltown, Iowa.

Christie's New York presents Property from the Bill and Dorothy Fisher Collection

Christie's is pleased to announce Property from the Bill and Dorothy Fisher Collection, a dedicated group of Impressionist works that will be showcased during the Fall Marquee Week of sales in New York, featuring outstanding examples by iconic artists including Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, Eugene Boudin, Pierre Bonnard, Alfred Sisley, Henri Matisse and others.

David Kleiweg de Zwaan, Christie's Senior Specialist, Impressionist and Modern Art, remarks, “We are delighted to present this exquisite collection of art from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in our 20th Century Evening Sale and Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sales. Acquired by esteemed collectors and generous patrons Bill and Dorothy Fisher more than half a century ago, this best-in-class grouping underscores the strong significance of American patronage in the history of Impressionism. We are deeply thankful to the Fisher family for entrusting our team to steward these works and look forward to fielding the market's response.”

Imogen Kerr, Christie's Co-Head of the 20th Century Evening Sale, remarks, “We are deeply honored to pay tribute to the Fisher family as we showcase cherished works from their exemplary collection in our Marquee Week Sales—with Paul Signac's L'Odet à Quimper standing paramount among them. The canvas is a triumphant demonstration, impressively scaled with rich color and detail, of the artist's unmatched coloristic abilities, employing rich hues of emerald and sapphire interspersed with warm jewel-tones capturing the magnificent light. We are truly thrilled to present it to the market this fall, particularly for such a benevolent and worthy cause.”

PAUL SIGNAC (1863-1935) L'Odet à Quimper, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 35 in. (69.9 x 88.9 cm.), Painted in 1922-1923, Estimate: $6,000,000-9,000,000

The top lot of the group is a masterpiece by Paul Signac, L'Odet à Quimper (estimate: $6 million – 9 million), a radiant canvas rooted in one of the artist's greatest passions. Signac was famously an enthusiastic amateur sailor; deeply fascinated by the water, he traveled extensively by boat, visiting many of France's, and Europe's, greatest ports. The work was painted in Quimper, the ancient medieval town on the river Odet in Brittany, in 1922-23 and is an exceptional example of the iconic Pointillist's mature painterly style. The painting has been in the collection of Bill and Dorothy Fisher for more than sixty years.

Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

November 2, 2025, through January 19, 2026

Few American artists are as closely associated with the outdoors as Winslow Homer (1836–1910), and few rival his ability to depict it in watercolor. This fall, visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to see the MFA’s collection of watercolors by the Boston-born artist—the largest collection in the world. Due to the medium’s light-sensitive nature, these works have not been displayed together in almost half a century.

Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor presents nearly 50 watercolors by the artist, alongside a selection of his related oils, drawings, and prints. With material ranging from Homer’s childhood drawings all the way to his final canvas, the exhibition follows the major chapters in his career and explores the various environments—ecological, artistic, social, and economic—that shaped his enduring work in watercolor.

Giving this exhibition its title, author Henry James once wrote, Homer “is a genuine painter; that is, to see and to reproduce what he sees is his only care…he naturally sees everything at once with its envelope of light and air.” Homer transformed the medium of watercolor through his relentless spirit of experimentation. With fluid brushstrokes, dynamic compositions, and a vibrant palette, he created immersive scenes that not only depict the natural world but also invite us to inhabit it. Homer’s watercolors capture the look and feel of a place, transporting us to the rugged Maine coast, the Adirondack Mountains, the English seashore, and the sunlit Caribbean.

The exhibition is co-curated by Christina Michelon, Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Ethan Lasser, John Moors Cabot Chair, Art of the Americas and Head of Exhibitions Strategy.

“We are excited for visitors to experience these watercolors in person,” said Michelon. “We rarely get to exhibit them because they are so light sensitive, so this is a truly special opportunity to witness Homer’s evolution as an artist in this medium and in the context of the MFA’s broader collection of his work. The MFA was Homer’s hometown museum, so we feel especially fortunate to steward the incredible collection of his art across media.”

“It is a great privilege to share these works with a new generation,” said Lasser. “We hope this exhibition brings our visitors some brightness and color as the days grow shorter. Homer invites us to slow down, look closely, and take careful stock of the natural wonders around us.

Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor is on view at the MFA from November 2, 2025, through January 19, 2026, in the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery. Timed-entry tickets are required for all visitors and can be reserved on mfa.org or purchased at the Museum. Member Preview takes place on November 1. Following the MFA’s presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where it will be on view from June 13, 2027, through September 19, 2027.

Exhibition Overview

The exhibition is largely organized chronologically, following the major chapters of Homer’s life. The first gallery opens with some of Homer’s most iconic watercolors, including the beloved The Blue Boat (1892) and introduces the range of techniques and approaches he developed over the course of nearly 40 years. Highlights in this section include Leaping Trout (1889), the first watercolor by Homer to enter the MFA’s collection and the first to be purchased by any museum.

The following section, “Origins,” explores Homer’s early years in Boston and his work as a freelance illustrator for print houses and publications including Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion and Harper’s Weekly, along with works from when he served as a “special artist” on the front lines of the Civil War. These include rare examples of Homer’s eyewitness observations: ink wash drawings that introduced him to the possibilities of watercolor. Works by Homer’s mother, Henrietta Benson Homer (1809–1884), an accomplished watercolorist, are also included here.

The 1870s marked a pivotal shift in both Homer’s life and the cultural landscape of the U.S. The section “Transitions” highlights the artist’s early forays into watercolor and show how he moved between watercolor and oil, often revisiting the same subjects in both mediums, such as the rural lives of children, the rolling Hudson Valley, and popular new leisure spaces like the beach. In this period, Homer's work offered solace to a nation recovering from the Civil War and he increasingly depicted women and children in works such as Boys in a Pasture (1874). He also addressed the realities of Black families during Reconstruction, as shown in The Dove Cote (about 1873).

Throughout his career, Homer was drawn to the sea. “Atlantic Shores” looks at the watercolors painted between 1873 and 1904 in coastal communities from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to Prouts Neck, Maine, as well as in Florida, the Caribbean, and England. As Homer refined his practice, he increasingly differentiated his oils from his watercolors—laboring over large paintings like The Lookout—"All's Well" (1896), but painting watercolors quickly, favoring observation and experimentation over narrative content.

Beginning in the early 1870s, Homer spent extended periods in the Adirondacks, later joining the North Woods Club, a private organization that preserved land for fishing and hunting. “The North Woods” presents some of Homer’s most innovative watercolors, trading ocean vistas for enveloping forest scenery.

In “Winslow Homer: A Legacy in Watercolor,” visitors can enjoy a video featuring Judith Walsh, paper conservator and Professor Emerita, SUNY Buffalo State College, and James Prosek, artist, writer, and naturalist, who share insights on Homer’s life and influence. The two take a closer look at some of Homer’s watercolors in the MFA’s Morse Study Room and venture to Homer's home and studio in Prouts Neck. Prosek also paints a watercolor, employing many of Homer’s techniques.

Homer’s studio was located directly on the coast, and he spent many hours during the last decades of his life observing and recording the movement of waves and the varied colors of ocean and sky. “Turn, Turn, Tumble,” the final gallery in the exhibition, takes its name from a phrase Homer wrote on the wall of his Prouts Neck Studio, articulating the motion of rolling waves, a phenomenon he frequently strove to capture. It includes two depictions of waves painted 23 years apart—Breaking Wave (Prouts Neck) (1887) and Driftwood (1909), Homer’s final oil painting.

About the Artist

Winslow Homer was born in Boston and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Around the age of 17, he began an apprenticeship at one of Boston’s leading print shops, where he learned about composition and draftsmanship. Though he later relocated to New York and then to Maine, Homer maintained his ties to Boston through the patrons, dealers, printers, and publishers who supported him throughout his career. Working as a freelance artist, Homer contributed illustrations to popular newspapers. At the start of the Civil War in 1861, Harper’s Weekly sent him to the front lines as an artist-correspondent. Homer was embedded with a regiment of Union troops for six weeks, where he sketched scenes of military action and life in camp.

Homer painted some of his first oils and began experimenting with watercolor after the war. He enjoyed increasing success as an oil painter, regularly exhibiting and selling his work to collectors in Boston and New York. In the 1870s, watercolor became a critical part of his art practice. As he honed his technique, Homer traveled widely to the Hudson Valley, the Adirondacks, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, the Caribbean, England, and Canada—drawing inspiration from the landscapes and communities he encountered. From 1884 until his death in 1910, he lived and worked in his Prouts Neck studio in Maine. At the age of 74, Homer died in his home and studio and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by a book from MFA Publications which includes vivid reproductions of Homer’s works as well as insightful essays on the artist and on the techniques and materials he used to create his watercolors.

Winslow Homer (1836–1910) once said, “You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.” Today, many consider Homer to be one of the most important painters to work in the medium. Winslow Homer in Watercolor offers a deep dive into one of the most significant collections of the artist's watercolors, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Featuring nearly fifty of these luminous works on paper, readers will be transported to the rugged Maine coast, the mountains of the Adirondacks, the shores of seaside England, and the bright sun of the Caribbean to explore the various environments—ecological, artistic, social, and economic—that impacted Homer’s enduring work in watercolor.

About the Author

Christina Michelon is Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Annette Manick is Head of Paper Conservation, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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