Winslow Homer and His Cullercoats Paintings: An American Artists in England's North East by David Tatham

Abstract

Reviewed by: Winslow Homer and His Cullercoats Paintings: An American Artists in England's North East by David Tatham Leann Davis Alspaugh (bio) Winslow Homer and His Cullercoats Paintings: An American Artists in England's North East, by David Tatham (Syracuse University Press, 2021), 90 pp. It has been said that Winslow Homer arrived in the English village of Cullercoats in April 1881 an illustrator and departed eighteen months later an artist. This is something of an exaggeration—we have only to see his pioneering works from Reconstruction Virginia—but it is true that the works in Homer's "Cullercoats manner" display a newfound assurance and maturity worth a closer look. The Cullercoats period has typically been regarded as something of a mystery. With relatively little documentation from or about the artist, these months are often considered merely a transition period for Homer (1836–1910), bridging the Barbizon mood of the 1860s with the later, so-called Darwinian works. Homer specialist David Tatham is too experienced a scholar to be entranced by romantic fictions. He establishes in the book's early chapters that we in fact know rather a lot about Homer's movements in the area and can assert quite credibly how the artist arrived, set to work, and quickly adapted to his surroundings. Primed with a three-week stay in London, mainly to examine the British Museum's watercolor paintings, Homer came to Cullercoats intending to stay only three months. Although he was surely aware of the region's rich cultural heritage, he included few examples of the ancient and medieval ruins in the vicinity. That Homer chose to concentrate on a living community rather than a bygone one is a sure sign of a turn toward pictorializing that was motivated more by inquiry into the present than sentiment about the past. Homer, ever the pragmatist, was also attracted to the area for its reputation as an art colony, which meant easy access to painting supplies, studio space, willing models, and exhibition opportunities. (Homer was also attuned to the value of his work in the marketplace and didn't hesitate to take an active hand in its promotion, even suggesting to one art dealer that putting an attractive girl at the front desk might increase foot traffic.) Of course, it was the hardworking fisherfolk of Cullercoats that kept Homer painting in Northumberland for more than a year. Tatham dispels any tendency to romanticize the village by pointing out that although it had a lively fishing population, it had neither docks nor a fishing market. Its denizens were not hardscrabble peasants carving out a brave existence in the face of encroaching industrialization—in fact, the majority of the town's non-fishing population were commuters making the daily trek by rail to Newcastle upon Tyne. Cullercoats itself (the name is thought to derive from dove, or culver, cotes) was cramped and not at all quaint. Its elevated position above Whitley Bay added geographic interest, especially in times of storms, when the fisherfolk stood lookout there. The village's most significant feature was the new Life Brigade Watch House, a waterfront base for the volunteer rescue squad that monitored the bay for vessels or individuals in distress; Homer often depicted its distinctive, russet-colored roof and clocktower in his Cullercoats works. [End Page 632] Since his days as a Harper's Civil War correspondent, Homer had become adept at capturing how groups of people move, separate, form smaller groups, and regroup whether on the battlefields or in the camps. He developed the ability to create a sense of narrative within a static image, deploying a few figures or hundreds to convey story and mood. In addition, he was one of the first American artists to record the interaction of the races with respect and sensitivity and to depict women as individuals rather than as conventional types. By the time he arrived in Cullercoats, Homer was an accomplished watercolorist, master of a delicate and unforgiving medium, and one that he deployed to great effect in his portraits of the fisherfolk, in particular, its women. Tatham notes that Homer's portrayals of the fishwives and fisherlasses as equal partners with the men...