Exhibitions: Luce Visible Storage/Study Center: Winslow Homer: Illustrating the Modern American Woman

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  April 1999: Winslow Homer: Illustrating America will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from July 2 through October 10, 1999. The exhibition comprises 115 wood engravings from 1857 to 1878 selected from a collection of more than 225 works given to the Museum by Harvey Isbitts. Among the featured works will be one of Homer’s earliest known prints, Minnie Clyde: Kitty Clyde’s Sister, used for a song sheet cover, as well as such popular genre scenes as Snap the Whip.
  
  The exhibition will include Homer’s well-known images depicting the grimness, savagery, and poignancy of the Civil War, including The War—Making Havelocks for the Volunteers and The Army of the Potomac—A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty. By war’s end Homer was the leading artist of Harper’s Weekly, favored with more full-page spreads, cover designs, and choice positions than any other artist. His 1860s illustrations of the seashore and various leisure activities give glimpses of the kind of work he would create in the future.
  
  The exhibition will explore the meanings of these images, placing them in a context that will reveal to the late twentieth-century viewer the intricacies of nineteenth-century American social conventions. The prints provide a view of life more than a hundred years ago as seen by one of America’s most important artists.
  
  On his twenty-first birthday in 1857 Homer rented a studio in Boston and began a long period of productivity. He sent drawings to Harper & Brothers and in less than a year the newly founded Harper’s Weekly published his Spring in the City. Thereafter Homer’s drawings appeared frequently in Harper’s Weekly. Among the more memorable ones was Husking the Corn in New England, the first in a long series of rustic genre pictures illustrating various aspects of farm life.
  
  In 1859, soon after his arrival in New York, Homer became sought after as one of America’s finest illustrators, working in wood engraving at a time when that medium was the most expedient mode of reproducing images in the popular press. Invited by Harper & Brothers to become a staff artist, he declined, preferring the freedom to work on his own.

  Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1995 - 2003. 01-06/1999, 033-34. View Original 1 . View Original 2

Press Coverage of this Exhibition

• The Listings: April 22-April 28April 22, 2005 "Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in prentheses. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets:..."
• The Listings: April 29-May 5April 29, 2005 "Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets:..."
• The Listings: May 6-12May 6, 2005 "Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets:..."
• The Listings: May 20-May 26May 20, 2005 "Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets:..."
• The ListingsMay 27, 2005 "Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets:..."