The Gulf Stream

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Gulf Stream
Winslow Homer, 1899
oil on canvas
71.5 × 124.8 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Gulf Stream is an 1899 oil on canvas by Winslow Homer. The painting shows a black man in a small boat struggling against the waves of the sea. Homer vacationed often in Florida, Cuba and the Caribbean. This painting alludes to John Singleton Copley's 1778 composition, Watson and the Shark (see lower right).

[edit] Interpretation

In American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, Robert Hughes contrasts these two pictures. First, Copley's shark jaw is alien in form and most likely drawn from second-hand accounts. Homer, having lived near water correctly captures the shark's anatomy. Secondly, in Copley's version, a rescue is near: the horizon is near and light in tone, boats are seen in the background. Homer's version, with circling sharks, broken mast, a lone figure tied to the boat, looming water spout, and at open sea give a sense of being lost at sea.

These two paintings contrast in their immediacy as well. In Copley's painting there is constant movement: the boat moving forward, the downward thrust of the spear, the two men reaching down for the victim, and finally the shark which extends off the canvas. In Homer's painting, the demise is more static: the sharks seem to swim slowly around the boat which lolls on each wave.