Seesaw--Gloucester, Massachusetts

This illustration is a combination of two earlier watercolors—one that depicted the boys on the seesaw and another that portrayed the three girls who are playing cat’s cradle in the foreground. The separation of individuals or groups of individuals as seen here is not uncommon in Homer’s work. The girls are dominated by the boys above them, and yet the girls also form a base that stabilizes the composition, perhaps reflecting Homer’s views on relationships between boys and girls.