Camp Fire

Winslow Homer

1880 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Homer first visited the Adirondacks, in upstate New York, in September 1870 and returned to the mountains frequently during the succeeding decades to hunt, fish, and gather ideas for paintings. This canvas originated in an 1880 trip to Keene Valley. Two fishermen, identified by their tackle basket and long-handled net, are lost in their thoughts or dozing by the campfire. They have constructed their shelter under a partly uprooted cedar, which provides both a symbol of ravaged nature and a striking compositional element. An artist friend of Homer’s remarked that “a woodsman could tell what kind of logs were burning by the sparks that rose in long curved lines.”

Artist

Winslow Homer

Date

1880

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Josephine Pomeroy Hendrick, in the name of Henry Keney Pomeroy, 1927