Two Ladies

Winslow Homer

1880 · Watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper · The American Wing

During the late 1870s Homer, the celebrated painter and illustrator of the American Civil War, occasionally portrayed fashionably dressed women and shepherdesses inspired by eighteenth-century Rococo porcelain and paintings. In 1880 he executed several watercolors of elegant young women seen singly or in pairs, as in this sheet. Such ingratiating glimpses of frivolous feminine pastimes would give way to more dour accounts of working women’s lives in views of Cullercoats and Tynemouth on England’s North Sea coast, where Homer worked in 1881–82.

Artist

Winslow Homer

Date

1880

Medium

Watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Estate of Florence Baird Meyer, in her memory, 1918