Breezing Up - Homer

Breezing Up By Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America. His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist and Homer's first teacher. He began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works. He also worked extensively in watercolor. Homer opened his own studio and sold his drawings. In 1873, Homer moved to Maine where he loved to paint the ocean.

One of Homer's most popular paintings, Breezing Up was first exhibited in 1876, the year of America's centenary celebration. Critics hailed the work for its freshness and energy. Amid the general climate of optimism and great expectations for the future, some sensed an even larger meaning in the scene—one writer declared that "the skipper's young American son, gazing brightly off to the illimitable horizon [is a symbol of] our country's quiet valor, hearty cheer, and sublime ignorance of bad luck."

questions:

• What type of painting is this? This is a seascape oil painting. What is a seascape? A seascape is a painting of the sea when the subject of the sea is most important. A painting which shows the shore and sea may be a landscape.
• Look at the colors Homer used in this painting. How do they make you feel? Is a storm coming up? Is there wind? Why is the water not one color? Sunlight touching the water creates the differences in color. What clues tell you there is a breeze? Look at the title, the waves, and the sails, look of the clouds and tilt of the sailboats.
• What shapes do you see in the work? Hint there are triangles of the sails and the boats. Outline the two groups of boys to discover two more triangles. What shapes are in contrast to the triangles? Hint there are the two rectangles that create the sea and sky.
• What is a horizon line? Look where the sky and sea meet. Is it below the halfway mark on the painting? Why would Homer not just paint the horizon line in the middle of the painting? The composition of the painting is more interesting when the horizon line is either below or above the middle of the work. By having it below the middle Homer has increased the distance or depth in the work and brought more attention to the first boat.
• How many sailboats do you see? Are they the same size? Why not? To create a depth in a work of art artists use perspective. Note the rules of perspective, big is near, far is small, level of object on paper, low objects are closer, color and texture are less with distance.
• What does the boat say on the back side? Are all the people in the boat boys? Which one is not? Why do you think they are out sailing on this day? Do you think they will be fishing? Do you feel the excitement of the experience they are having?

Activities:

Bring in the prints for The Great Wave (1st grade art awareness piece #8) and Sinbad the Sailor (4th grade art awareness piece #21). Compare and contrast these three pieces. Each one is the same in that each is a picture of a person(s) in a boat out on the water. The vast differences come in age, genre, color scheme, and state of the water. Have the children draw their own picture of people on the boat in the middle of the water. To be like Breezing Up, ask them not to have any of the people in the picture face the viewer.

Play a CD of ocean sounds in the background.

Provide crayons, pastels, paints and have students create their own seascapes.

Bring in a model of a boat and ask them to draw a picture of the model.