Winslow Homer

In this small picture of a girl and boy fishing, Homer captured the streaks of light along their slender poles, expressing its effects on their rose, blue, and yellow garments. The American writer and critic Henry James described Homer’s children as “freckled, straight-haired Yankee urchins” with their “calico sunbonnets and flannel shirts.” James continued: “He has taken the least pictorial features of the least pictorial range of scenery and civilization . . . has resolutely treated them as if they were pictorial . . . and he has uncontestably succeeded.”