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Winter Coast

Winslow Homer American
1890
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
This painting is an atypical representation of Prouts Neck for Homer, in both its seasonal focus and its vertical composition. At left-center, a diminutive, solitary hunter—dead goose over his shoulder and gun in hand—contemplates the titanic force of the sea and storm along the frozen Maine coast. With the flick of his brush and a stark palette of earthen tones, the artist conveys in bravura fashion the elemental relationship between humankind and “wild nature" that remained his primary subject throughout the 1890s. One critic described it as a “most bleak, cold, ‘shivery’ place . . . a rigorous condition of affairs."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Winter Coast
  • Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
  • Date: 1890
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 36 1/8 × 31 11/16 inches (91.8 × 80.5 cm)
    Framed: 44 5/8 × 40 3/8 × 2 7/8 inches (113.3 × 102.6 × 7.3 cm)
  • Credit Line: Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917 (Cat. 1004)
  • Rights and Reproduction: Philadelphia Museum of Art
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing