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How Many Eggs?

Winslow Homer American
1873
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 is among the most vibrant and compositionally daring of Homer’s Gloucester watercolors. It also reveals his early and enduring fascination with the conflict between humans and nature; here, youthful curiosity threatens the fragile eggs of a sand-swallow colony in the dunes. The sophisticated verticality of the image, with its precariously positioned, active subjects, distinguishes it from the artist’s more placid scenes of childhood produced during his formative summer of 1873.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: How Many Eggs?
  • Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
  • Date: 1873
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Watercolor on paper
  • Dimensions: 12 3/4 × 9 3/8 in. (32.4 × 23.8 cm)
    Framed: 25 x 21 x 2 1/2 in. (63.5 x 53.3 x 6.4 cm)
  • Credit Line: Karen and Kevin Kennedy
  • Rights and Reproduction: Photograph by Joshua Nefsky
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing