Winslow Homer (1836-1910), born in Boston, started his career as a commercial printmaker and an illustrator for popular magazines. Editors at one of these publications, Harper’s Weekly, sent Homer to Virginia to document events during the Civil War. He eventually turned his attention to oil painting.
In the 1860s and 1870s, Homer lived in New York City and traveled to Europe. During this period, he experimented with his style and technique. Homer firmly believed that the observation of nature was the key to artistic success. “When I have selected the thing carefully,” he once explained, “I paint it exactly as it appears.”
The Gulf Stream is a deeply symbolic painting. Homer depicts a narrative about the human struggle against nature. A lone man gazes out to sea in a small fishing boat with no rudder and a broken mast. A few stalks of sugar cane are his only remaining source of nourishment. Sharks circle the boat as a waterspout (a storm on the ocean similar to a tornado) gathers in the background. While Homer provides a glimmer of hope by placing a ship on the horizon, the figure looks in the other direction, not seeing his possible source of rescue.
Homer excels at capturing stormy seas. He paints the choppy water in bands of varied color, depicting the way sunlight shines through the thick clouds above. He scatters specks of color, ranging from warm red to inky blue and white, across the surface of the water, rendering the water’s constant churn. The artist uses these swirling colors to create movement and tension in the dynamic scene.
Homer’s composition contributes to the narrative. The damaged boat and the sharks with open mouths in the foreground suggest that disaster is imminent. Homer places the horizon line high in the scene, as if the angry sea could envelop the viewer as well as the man in the boat. The placement of the horizon line also highlights the depth of the space in the scene. Homer uses scale as well, rendering the ship as a tiny gray shape, to emphasize the great distance between the figure in the foreground and the ship in the background.