blog 3

Northeaster

Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)

Date: 1895; reworked by 1901

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 34 1/2 x 50 in. (87.6 x 127 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of George A. Hearn, 1910

Accession Number: 10.64.5

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 767

The northeaster is a very beautiful painting. It is a natural scenario of a storm that the artist has tried to portray in the painting. The painting is supposed to be a violent storm which was endured for a long time on the coast. The form of art is 2D as described above it is a painting with oil on canvas. Homer used a mixture of dark and cool colors to give a vibrant and beautiful effect. Dramatically by looking at the painting we should see destruction or some sort of violence or harm brought about by the storm but instead we see the ways building up and the tide at its highest, this leaves the viewer in anticipation that what might have happened after the tide had collapsed on the shore as to the magnitude seems horrific and huge. The style of the painting is representational, as it is an imagery of a sea storm and the use of detail and patterned making of waves make the artwork look quite real and natural.  The painting can be put into the category of landscape paintings if we talk about its style. The visual elements I saw that the artist has used are line, shape, color, value and pattern. Although we cannot see distinct lines connecting to each other but we still find that the part of the painting which is land, or the shore, has a pattern of lines to add detail and build height in the mountain, the lines although merge together but some are definitely distinct to form shapes of stones and a rough shore with some vegetation which has this reddish brown color. The next and most abundant visual element is the use of cool colors with dark colors in the painting although when I initially looked I was glued to the cool colors since they are so attractive, but while making out details in the artwork I saw that it definitely has the foreground, middle ground, and back ground. The foreground is the shore, the sea and the huge wave is the middle ground, and the buildup of tides and waves in the back to show a continuation of the storm are the background. The drawing is an achromatic and the variation of colors shows the perfection of the artist, the grey/black sky, the fog and the different colors to make the land make the painting so beautiful. The artist followed a pattern for the huge wave, the pattern is actually the different smaller waves assimilating into a bigger wave, but the background shows more waves which seem further from this one and that’s why he used a different way to draw them. The artist also used value/ light in the painting as to the painting shows a variation of dark and light, the scene portrayed seems of a cool evening when the storm came as to the sky is not black but grey and the water in the distance is not light but darker in color which means that it is definitely not a sunny day. The visual effects of lighting would really matter in this painting as to if it is set in a lit up place it would not have the same effect on the viewer as without too much light. If the artist even incorporated a little more of the warm colors in the back ground of this painting it would not have looked the same as it is.