By 1857, however, he was an illustrator for Harper's Weekly drawing
happy scenes of country life at first and then, during the Civil War,
pictures of the loneliness and the pastimes of soldiers far from home.
He painted his first oil during this period, again with almost no
instruction; for Homer believed that a man who wished to be an artist
must not look at other artists' work. Consequently, he remained resolutely
alone, refusing to have anything to do with European art.
After the war he returned to New York where he continued as an illustrator
and painted a series of genre pictures of children and country life.
These met with both enthusiastic public approval and some critical
disapproval. Often repeated by later critics, the complaint centered
around being disturbed by the simplicity and the force of Homer's
statements. Like all artists who work alone, Homer matured slowly,
and as he matured, he lost interest in portrayals of the land and
children. In 1883, he moved from New York to Maine where he set up
a studio close to the wild and rocky coast and began his series of
watercolors of the sea and its people, before finally losing interest
in people altogether, and confining himself almost entirely to "the
lonely sea and the sky." His watercolors are so powerful that it is
difficult to believe that Homer was himself "a small, reserved gentleman,
quiet and unostentatious." His view of nature was severe and, even
in the scenes of tropical waters, brilliant in color, indicative of
his belief that man himself is nothing in comparison to the vastness
of the ocean. Homer's lofty point of view found fewer admirers than
had his earlier, more easily fathomed works but he was not without
recognition even before his death, in 1910, and is today ranked as
one of the finest of the world's watercolorists.
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