Collections: American Art: Our Watering Places--The Empty Sleeve at Newport

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Our Watering Places--The Empty Sleeve at Newport

This illustration accompanied a story in Harper’s Weekly, “The Empty Sleeve at Newport; or, Why Edna Ackland Learned to Drive.” Captain Harry Ash, having lost an arm, returned from the war seeking his love, Edna Ackland, who, he discovered, had learned to drive a horse and buggy in his absence. The returning men confronted women who had adjusted to changed circumstances and sometimes took a stronger role in the relationship. Captain Ash and Edna Ackland resolve their misunderstandings as she explains to him, “I must be left and right hand [for you] also, should it be God’s pleasure . . . And I learned, as I have learned many things, for love of you.” The dominance of the nineteenth-century male prevails when Ash exclaims in the end: “Yet, for all that, his eye is on the road and his voice guides her; so that, in reality, she is only his left hand, and he, the husband, drives.”


• Artist: Winslow Homer, American, 1836-1910
• Medium: Wood engraving
• Dates: 1865
• Dimensions: Illustration: 9 1/8 x 13 5/8 in. (23.2 x 34.6 cm) Frame: 16 3/4 x 22 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (42.5 x 57.8 x 3.8 cm)
• Collections: American Art
• Museum Location: This item is not on view
• Accession Number: 1998.105.91
• Credit Line: Gift of Harvey Isbitts
• Image: Overall, 1998.105.91_bw.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910). Our Watering Places--The Empty Sleeve at Newport, 1865. Wood engraving, Illustration: 9 1/8 x 13 5/8 in. (23.2 x 34.6 cm) Frame: 16 3/4 x 22 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (42.5 x 57.8 x 3.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Harvey Isbitts, 1998.105.91 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1998.105.91_bw.jpg)
• Catalogue Description: Page from Harper's Weekly, August 26, 1865, vol. IX, p. 532