Main content
Art of the Americas to World War I
Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 7
Lesson 5: Realism in the United States- Becoming a city: daily life in 1820, Brooklyn
- John Wesley Jarvis, Black Hawk and His Son Whirling Thunder
- Mount, Bargaining for a Horse
- John James Audubon, The Wild Turkey
- Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits
- Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico
- Before the Civil War, the Mexican-American War as prelude
- Face to face with the voters: Bingham's Country Politician
- Frederic Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia
- Blythe, Justice
- Martyr or murderer? Hovenden's The Last Moments of John Brown
- The Civil War: putting Liberty front and center
- Johnson, A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves
- Mending America, women and the Civil War
- Cotton, oil, and the economics of history
- Eakins, The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull)
- Heroes of modern surgery: Eakins' Dr. Gross and Dr. Agnew
- Eakins, The Gross Clinic
- The U.S. Civil War, sharpshooters, and Winslow Homer
- Winslow Homer, Army Teamsters
- Winslow Homer, Taking Sunflower to Teacher
- Homer, The Life Line
- Homer, The Fog Warning (Halibut Fishing)
- Homer, Northeaster
- Brown, View of the Lower Falls, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
- The closing of the frontier and The Fall of the Cowboy
- The Radical Floriography of Sarah Mapps Douglass
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Homer, The Life Line
Winslow Homer, The Life Line, 1884, oil on canvas, 28-5/8 x 44-3/4 inches / 72.7 x 113.7 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Isn't that the real power of this piece that you never see the face of the hero ()? I can't think of a single painting like this. It really speaks to the emotional talent of Homer. 1:15(14 votes)
- Yes! To me it is asking us to wonder if we could be that rescuer, if we could see ourselves in a similar role.(9 votes)
- Is this Homer who wrote the Iliad?(3 votes)
- Definitely not. The Iliad was written in VII b.c in ancient Greece, so more-less 2 600 years before this Homer.(12 votes)
- definitaly i totaly agreee. what is the scarf for(1 vote)
- The scarf is showing that the rescuer's identity isn't necessary, but the act of rescue is more important.(3 votes)
- Is the woman related to the hero?(1 vote)
- I think it all depends on how you perceive the painting.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music) Female: If it seem a painting
of a woman being rescued from a shipwreck by a
courageous man, whose risking his life would be filled
with sentiment and emotion. What's so wonderful to me
about Winslow Homer is the lack of that sentiment. We
have this dramatic moment. Homer has not exploited it emotionally. Male: In fact he's even
hidden the face of the hero. Female: That's a remarkable
decision when you think about it. The man
whose saving this womans life, his face is
completely obscured by this scarf that just happens
at this moment to have [whipped] in front of his face. Of
course, this isn't a photograph. Male: This incredible
sense of kind of selfless heroism. These paintings
by Homer were recognizes inherently American.
Their themes, I think, still resonate with us.
When you listen to somebody whose performed a dramatic
rescue, perhaps on the nightly news, they
also push the camera away. There is a way in which
we want to be selfless in these moments. Female: We have a real feeling
of watching this drama unfold. Male: The emphasis is
almost on the mechanics of the rescue. This was
a new technology that allowed for the rescue
of people from ships near the shore. You can just
make out the loose sail billowing in the upper
left corner. You can see people who are watching
the rescue on rocks at the upper right. In
fact, that rope bows down and we can feel the
weight of these figures as they skirt with their
feet, this terrifying surf. The colors and the tones their so subdued and they create the sense of the freezing menace of the water. It's
not just that they're soaked through. They don't have much time. That woman is unconscious
and close to freezing to death. There is this
real sense of urgency. Female: So, we look at
the water we see grey's, pale blues, and tones of white. Lots of different kinds of brush
strokes from little dabs of paint that suggest
the water is spraying upward, to longer strokes that
suggest the force of the waves. Male: I actually love that
area just at the cliffs on the upper right. You can
see the spray dissolving even the solid blacks.
If you look at the waves immediately below the
cliffs, you can see the translucently where the
wave is very thin and light moves through it. Female: Look at mans
right foot in the water. You feel it dragging in
the way that it's slowing them down as they move along this pulley. Male: There's a real
sense of the particulars that make this seem so
immediate, and I love the way the water drips from that cord. Female: Somehow, the
paint seems wet as though there were water spraying
up from below that the clothes the figures are
wearing is soaked through. Male: In fact, in someways
this painting is a nude. The woman is wearing a
dress that is absolutely proper, but her outfit
is so laden with water that it follows the contours of her body. Female: Look at the drops of
water from her right hand. He could really paint. Male: If you follow her
hips down there's just a little bit of skin
that's exposed just above her knee. You see that
perhaps her petticoat below her dress. I can
almost imagine a 19th century viewer wanting to pull that
down to retrieve her modesty. Female: This really
typical of the subject that Homer painted later in
his career when he lived in Maine. This idea of man
and the forces of nature, and the futility of mans
efforts in the face of nature. Although in this case we do
have a successful struggle. Male: Obviously, Homer
didn't paint this on a beach watching a rescue.
The painting is based loosely on a fairly
recent rescue of the coast in New Jersey, but was actually posed in New York City in where
he kept his studio even after he had moved to
Prouts Neck. This was a studio building on West
10th Street. Imagine then his models up on the
roof and him drenching them with water to make
the effect just right. He recognized as a brilliant
painter in his own day. He was honored as the
foremost American painter. (piano music)