Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

P: Your book doesn't say as much as I'd like about one of the most remarkable American artists, Winslow Homer. So let's, well, I want to expand on the turning point in his career when he started doing watercolor painting.

He started in oil but went on to paint watercolors for almost, well, the rest of his career. And there's some of his most celebrated paintings. He was exposed to watercolor early in life, but it took him a long time to, to really adopt it. When Homer was a boy, his mother, an amateur artist taught him to use watercolors.

As a young artist, he used watercolors as preparations for wood engravings. He painted watercolors directly onto the wood block like preliminary sketches as a sort of a guide for the engraver who then actually carved the block following Homer's outline. But it wasn't a separate. These sketches that can't really be considered watercolor paintings per se.

Alright, now watercolor, it's actually older than oil painting. The ancient Egyptians did watercolor paintings. It's cheaper than oil paint, easier to use outside, outdoors than oils, cause it drives faster and it's more portable. Artists often painted with watercolors outside out in nature and with oils when they were inside in their studios seem to be a lot of good things about watercolor, but why wasn't it very popular then?

Well, you've got to understand the attitudes during the time homer was painting in the early and mid 1800s in North America. Oil painting was still more important than watercolor painting. It had a higher status in art circles. Collectors didn't value the water colors as much. They wanted oil paintings. That's what they were willing to pay money for. Of course, artists, including Homer, wanted to create paintings they get paid for. So oils were the way to go.

But in 1866, the American society of painters in watercolors was founded, don't need to worry about this name. They held shows exhibitions of watercolor paintings, a major goal being to promote watercolor painting, you know, to elevate its status. In 1873, they organized a huge international show in New York. It was bigger than any other showing of watercolor paintings in this country up to that time. And it did a lot to establish it as a serious form of art.

Almost 600 watercolors from Europe and America were on display. People were really amazed at how good they were and what could be done with watercolor. So it was in this year after this international display that watercolors started to catch on with collectors. Now they wanted watercolors in their collections. They also, they liked watercolors because they were more affordable and they were typically smaller than oils.

Now, Homer hit a rough patch in his career around this time. It wasn't going as well as he'd hoped. He'd had some early success here and in Europe, he'd actually been deemed a rising star, but that seemed to more or less quickly pass when he returned from Europe in the late 1860s, his oil paintings just weren't selling. Critics didn't rave about these later oil paintings like they did about his early ones. He was done, he was doing a lot of commercial work as an illustrator for making drawings for magazines and newspapers. This didn't really fulfill his, it didn't satisfy him you know.

But after this big international watercolor show, Homer started to seriously, well, he really for the first time applied himself to watercolor painting. He took a trip to Massachusetts and painted children playing on the docks near the ocean and other outdoor scenes around there.

Homer painted this piece called a basket of clams during this trip. Even these first watercolors of his just simply take my breath away. He used color so well, there's a lightness and ease that isn't in his oils. He experimented in different ways. There's there's a sense of freedom. It was a new beginning form, a fortunate change.

Obviously, he had tremendous skill in watercolor and this trip kind of marked a rebirth, the technique, his skill, it exploded into these vibrant, bold, really brush strokes. He showed these Massachusetts paintings at the next exhibition held by the society of painters in watercolors. Just a year after that first big exhibition, the critics were no longer lukewarm about his painting. Homer's newest works were judged to be more original than any others in North America.