Homer at the Beach

Unseen by the public for more than a century, Winslow Homer's BoysBathing surfaced this year as a new addition to the collection of the Hood Museum of Art. Painted during the summer of 1880, when Homer was living on an island in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Boys Bathing lightheartedly depicts children frolicking. In his later, better-known works, Homer would switch gears and concentrate upon the "high maritime drama of the rugged seas," in the words of Barbara MacAdam, the Hood's curator of American art.

Breaking from the traditional use of opaque, thickly applied watercolor and graphite of his previous paintings, Homer experimented with the medium's transparent quality. By strategically placing brush strokes and leaving spaces of paper white, he was able to manipulate light, volume, and movement. Dissatisfied with the composition of the painting, he blotted out the sail of the boats at the upper left and scraped out three or four figures in the two boats in the center. The work-inprogress

nature of Boys Bathing provides a great deal of insight into Homer's creative process, says MacAdam.

Edward Connery Lathem '51, the College's former dean of libraries, presented the painting in memorial tribute to his close friend Rudolph Ruzicka. It is the first painting by Homer to enter the Hood.

Boys Bathing has made a splash at the Hood Museum.