Butterflies

Artist Winslow Homer (American, 1836 - 1910)

Date1878

MediumOil on canvas mounted on masonite

Dimensions37 3/4 × 24 in. (95.9 × 61 cm)
Other (depth of masonite mount): 1 cm (3/8 in.)

ClassificationsOil Painting

Credit LineFriends of William F. Brooks

Terms

Object number1950.03

DescriptionThe subject of a beautiful woman in a natural setting was one that Homer had explored since his first paintings, from Red Feather (1864; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn.) to a group of watercolors from the 1870s to such oil paintings as Laurels (1879; Detroit Institute of Arts). Butterflies, however, was executed at nearly the end of Homer's interest in the theme; it is one of his last and largest expressions of the fashionable aesthetic idea of "art for art's sake."
The painting is one of four similarly formatted works of 1877-78, each depicting a single figure and all painted in 1877-78: the others are "Autumn, Gathering Autumn Leaves", and "Woman in Autumn Woods".(1) The group constituted an experiment for the artist. He employed his customary large canvas (24 by 38 inches), the same size he had used for many of his most famous works in the 1870s (such as "Breezing Up" (1876; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), but he up-ended it, matching the orientation of the standing figure in order to concentrate attention on it. The group is also experimental in that at least one of the paintings, "Woman in Autumn Woods", is unfinished. The New Britain painting is the most finished and elaborate.
Homer executed the paintings when he was at a crossroads. He had been criticized for years for his faulty technique. Summarizing his career to 1878, George Sheldon, a respected critic, declared: "Mr. Homer is not wholly a master of technique, but he understands the nature and the aims of art . . . . His style is large and free, realistic and straightforward . . . with an abundance of free touches . . . fine enough almost to atone for insufficiency of textures and feebleness of relation of color to sentiment." Reviewing the watercolors Homer had exhibited in spring 1878, "some of them exceedingly simple--a girl swinging in a hammock, another standing in the fields, a third playing checkers or chess," Sheldon found "the handling of the figures was easy and decisive" but suggested that they sold for low prices "partly because of their fragmentary character." This ambivalent critical reaction from such a largely positive critic must have suggested to Homer that "technique" or the "decorative" rather than the "truthful" or the "natural" was the aspect of his art on which he needed to concentrate.(2)
The decorative subject of a beautiful woman standing alone was very popular with artists and audiences and reflects the growing appreciation of the beauty of art rather than its moral or didactic message, a development now called the Aesthetic Movement.(3) Homer certainly participated in this movement, as the number of his watercolors and smaller oils of this type suggest. Many of these are his most delicate and beautiful works. Homer, however, seems never to have been fully committed to the principles of Aestheticism. In fact, the last painting in the group, "Gathering Autumn Leaves", depicts a rough-shod farm boy, introducing a note of rustic reality that undercuts the fanciful elegance of the other works.
Homer had joined the Tile Club the year before he painted this group. These artists joined together to produce aesthetic decoration for the home by making hand-painted tiles. Homer's most important contributions to the Tile Club consist of two large single figures flanking a fireplace. The paintings, in their scale and subject matter, must therefore be seen in light of this effort. At the same time, as Homer produced nothing else like them, they may also be seen as the first signs of his realization that such high aestheticism was not for him. Two years after painting "Butterflies", Homer abandoned New York and lived in a small fishing village on the northern coast of England where he painted stocky hardy fisherwomen--about as far from ladies and butterfly nets as one can go. In 1882, when Homer returned to America, Sheldon again described his style: "He paints what he has seen; he tells what he has felt; he records what he knows." Sheldon contrasted this honesty to the "defty, dexterous, dashy, artificial effects" desired by younger European-trained artists.(4) Homer's decision had been ratified by the critics.

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Bibliography:
Lloyd Goodrich, "Winslow Homer" (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1944); John Wilmerding, "Winslow Homer" (New York: Praeger, 1972); Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., "Winslow Homer" (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990); Nicolai Cikovsky Jr. and Franklin Kelly, "Winslow Homer", exhib. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995).

Notes:
. "Autumn" (private collection), "Gathering Autumn Leaves" (Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York), and "Woman in Autumn Woods" (Santa Barbara Museum of Art).
2. George W. Sheldon, "American Painters, with Eighty-Three Examples of Their Work Engraved on Wood" (New York: D. Appleton, 1879), pp. 25-26, 28-29.
3. James McNeil Whistler was the foremost figure in this movement, promoting, as Royal Cortissoz recalled, their "habit of 'seeing beautifully'" (Samuel Isham, "The History of American Painting" [New York: Macmillan, 1936], p. 508).
4. George W. Sheldon, "Hours with Art and Artists" (New York: D. Appleton, 1882), pp. 136, 139.

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