January 29 - February 5, 1998
![[Fine Art!]](/archive/art/98/01/29/image/FineArt!_468x80.gif)
"WINSLOW HOMER: BY LAND AND BY SEA",At the Worcester Art Museum, through March 22. Latin and . . . Greek?
Worcester unveils Homer and its new "Roman Life and Art"
by Jeffrey Gantz
"ROMAN LIFE AND ART REVEALED", A new permanent gallery at the Worcester Art Museum.
Okay, we have the Greeks and the Romans, Homer and -- oops, wrong Homer. In truth there's absolutely nothing to connect this winter's new attractions at the Worcester Art Museum except that they're worth the trip from Springfield, Providence, or Boston and should be required viewing for Worcesterites. "Winslow Homer: By Land and Sea" is a pendant to the Museum of Fine Arts' massive 1996 Homer show: the WAM's impressive Homer collection, 17 watercolors and three oils (just one watercolor, Girl with a Shell at Ear, is absent). "Roman Life and Art Revealed" is the fruit of a $1.3 million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund that enabled the museum to divide its classical holdings and accord the Roman artifacts a room all to themselves. They deserve the space; so do the Homer watercolors, which because the medium is sensitive to light may not be shown again for another decade.
"By land and by sea," like "Titian and Rubens" at the Gardner (see article on Titian and Rubens), proves that small can be sublime. The very earliest work in the show, Boys and Kitten (1873, during a summer in Gloucester), is an education all by itself, with the sophistication of an oil and the spontaneity of a watercolor. Homer uses almost abstract dabs of blues and browns to define the boys' shirts and trousers and hats -- right down to the notch in the brim of the straw hat worn by the center boy. The kitten itself is just a blur of beige; the real attention grabber is the black cat looking on curiously at the left, its tail curled in rapt contemplation. This grouping takes up a mere quarter of the competition, as if to suggest the vastness, and the potential, of the world/playspace these barefoot boys enjoy.
Crab Fishing (1883) underscores Homer's treatment of watercolor as a serious medium. The billowing sea and moody gray sky (no visible horizon) would do justice to Caspar David Friedrich, but they're just backdrop for the fishing boat. On the left we have man at work, in a yellow slicker, setting out crab pots. On the right, girls at play -- what might be his three daughters, two bundled up in shawls and looking apprehensive, the third with her shawl about her shoulders and peering into the briny deep. (If this were a fairy tale, she'd be the youngest daughter.) Everyone is exquisitely molded, American Victorian-style, but the splotches of color are definitive, the artist highlighting the yellow slicker and the two red shawls against the gray sea/sky.
Worcester's Homer watercolors are divided almost equally between north (Canada; the Adirondacks; and New England, especially his home in Prout's Neck, Maine) and south (Florida, the Bahamas, Bermuda). I confess that the southern group often seem lazy, almost inert. Rum Cay (1898-'99) and The Light House, Nassau (1899) are laid-back to a fault, as if the tropical breezes had intoxicated Homer. Bermuda Settlers (1901), on the other hand, is sure to be the most popular work in the show. The "settlers" are five contentedly grazing razorback hogs, one of whom looks directly at us in a way that could put one off bacon for a month. (This Sunday, February 1, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., watercolor artist Timothy J. Clark will offer a "Public Watercolor Demonstration," explaining Homer's techniques by re-creating Bermuda Settlers at the WAM.)
There are more winners: the almost abstract Coral Formation (1901), with its military tones of blue and gold; Fishing Boats, Key West (1904), a study in nuances of blue and gray; and, most of all, The Turkey Buzzard (1904), an almost Oriental composition where the central grove of palm trees is offset by the five shore birds to the left, the tiny boat with two fisherman (or perhaps duck hunters) to the right, and the solitary vulture circling overhead. There's a story here; we just don't know how it ends. That applies also to In a Florida Jungle (1885-'86), where an alligator prepares to charge at an unsuspecting roseate spoonbill while two vultures wait for possible leftovers.
But it's the cold north that energizes Homer. Two of his best, Sunset, Prout's Neck (1895) and Prout's Neck, Surf on Rocks (1895), offset the blue/gray/black of the sea with hints of a red sky, achieving a smoky effect that's at once Italian and Japanese. His colors have become more transparent; here they almost glow. Two Canadian works, Saguenay, Lower Rapids (1897) and Grand Discharge, Lake St. John (1897), backdrop the rust-colored roiling rapids with infinite shadings of gray/green/black fir; they're the visual equivalent of Sibelius's wintry forest ode, Tapiola.
Read Jeffrey Gantz on Titian & Rubens at the Gardner.
Rounding out the show are the museum's three Homer oils. The School Mistress (circa 1870) used to be The School Girl -- comparison with models from that time now suggests this firm-countenanced young woman is a teacher, not a student. There is a hint of grimness about her expression, as if she could foresee a bleak career and life ahead. The Gale (1883-'93) underwent major alterations after its initial unfavorable reception by the critics -- and for once the critics were right. Not that the 1883 version was bad, but the Life Brigade House and the rescuers at the lifeboat made the plight of the sturdy woman standing on the shore with her child all too obvious. Homer painted over the boat and house, leaving just the woman and child and an implacable sea: we can guess that her man is out there somewhere, but we can't see him, or know whether help is on the way.
Less, Homer learned, is often more -- certainly that's the lesson of Coast in Winter (1892). There are some mysterious footprints to the lower left, and there's a minuscule black blob toward the top that could conceivably be a human figure. Otherwise there's just the angry sea, its swirls echoed in the squiggly, bonsai-like shrubs that dot the snowy landscape. Nature in Homer always seems to be in harmony with itself; it's we humans who keep posing the questions.
The Roman Gallery actually begins as soon as you enter the museum: the atrium floor's "Hunting Scenes," which measures a whopping 500 square feet, is the largest mosaic in the US. There are more mosaic treasures on the walls, all from Antioch, whose Roman civilization flourished until AD 526, when an earthquake destroyed the city.
The gallery proper is small and a little cramped, and at first everything is apt to look like anonymous classical statuary, but Roman art has its own distinct personality. You might start on the near right wall with the terra cotta Etruscan cinerary urn, circa 150 BC, whose frowning beak-nosed occupant is sculpted reclining on the lid and enjoying the eternal banquet while waiting for Hollywood to call and offer a character part in the next Godfather movie. Their huge eyes apart, the mummy portraits from the second century AD are unexpectedly personable. So are the marble and bronze busts that line the long far wall: Marcus Aurelius with his smooth features and elaborate hair, Nero snub-nosed and thin-lipped, Caligula with a strong nose and a high forehead, Marcus Aurelius's daughter with a bun of hair that could belong to Charlotte Brontë.
The faun Marsyas, flayed for challenging Apollo, is represented in blood-red marble; there's part of a snake in green granite, and a six-foot headless white-marble representation of Hygieia, the goddess of health. The cabinets along the near wall hold mirrors and horse parade armor and some perfume bottles that would do modern Venetian glassblowers proud. Highlighting the central "The Greek Ideal in Roman Art" island is a four-foot Venus (first or second century AD) that is indeed ideal, proof that the Romans could do Greek art when they wanted to.
The WAM has its usual snazzy assortment of related events on tap for this new gallery, including "Myth of the Month" tours, a "Roman World" family day (March 21), a "Roman Revelry" party (March 14), a pair of lectures (February 8 and May 3), and a Friday-evening "Roman Film Festival" comprising A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (March 6), Spartacus (March 20), and the 1934 Cleopatra (April 3). Kudos to the museum for making classical culture not just educational but fun.
