Promenade on the Beach
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Promenade on the Beach is one of Homer’s most distinctive paintings of women and the sea. A self-consciously decorative work, it reveals his interest in the progressive Aesthetic Movement that attracted many Americans at the time. Homer creates an enigmatic contrast between two artistically dressed figures gazing longingly out to sea and the threatening blue-gray sky, anticipating his later elemental works of natural conflict. The transitional painting evokes the artist’s earlier Gloucester watercolors while also recalling the mysterious mood of modern women at the beach from Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts, on view nearby. A critic of the day noted the seascape’s suggestion of “romances" with the inclusion of the women, which he felt made a “poem" of the painting.
Artwork Details
- Title: Promenade on the Beach
- Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
- Date: 1880
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.2 cm)
Framed: 34 1/4 x 44 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (87 x 113 x 14 cm) - Credit Line: Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Mass., Gift of the Misses Emily and Elizabeth Mills in memory of their parents, Mr. & Mrs. Isaac Mills (36.06)
- Rights and Reproduction: Photography by David Stansbury
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing