Winslow Homer Online

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is proud to announce that it has received funding from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art to develop a dynamic website devoted to its Winslow Homer Archival Collection (WHAC). When completed, this digital resource will serve as the main portal for learning about and accessing the WHAC, as well as a leading source of online information and scholarly resources about the artist and his practice. Co-led by independent scholar Judith C. Walsh and BCMA co-director Frank H. Goodyear and supported by an Advisory Committee of scholars, educators, and Bowdoin staff, the BCMA envisions its completion in early 2028.

To start, the website will include four main elements:

1. A search function to allow scholars, students, educators, and the wider public to access the entirety of the WHAC, including new high resolution reproductions;
2. A selection of scholarly resources related to specific objects in the WHAC, including portals to new research about such items as Homer’s news clipping scrapbook, Homer’s prints, and Homer’s letters;
3. A collection of Homer-related educational resources for K-12 and college educators;
4. An on-line bulletin board to post news about current Homer-related research projects, public programs, and forthcoming exhibitions.

Descendants of the artist donated the WHAC to the BCMA in 1964. With more than 300 unique items, it is the largest scholarly archive related to the artist and his family. Highlights include 150 letters from the artist, a scrapbook of 393 newspaper clippings collected by the artist and his family, more than 50 vintage family photographs, numerous books from the family’s library, and a collection of unique objects owned by the artist. In addition, galvanized by the scholarly interest in Homer’s printmaking practice by former BCMA directors Philip Beam, Marvin Sadik, and Richard West, the BCMA has collected almost every print that Homer created during his lifetime.

While many Homer researchers have used the WHAC in the past, it is not especially well-known nor easy to access. This project aims to raise the visibility of this collection, to make it more accessible to different audiences, and to advance scholarship about the artist.

In addition to a search function that will allow users to search the collection in its entirety, at the heart of this website will be a series of new scholarly resources related to items in the collection. To start, the BCMA envisions developing three specific projects:

1. Winslow Homer’s news clipping scrapbook

This scrapbook holds 393 press clippings and other bits of ephemera related to Homer’s career. In 2017, scholar and conservator Judith Walsh approached the BCMA about a collaborative endeavor to study the scrapbook. This began a multi-year effort to find citations for the clippings, with the goal of conserving, digitizing, and publishing the book online. Since then, Walsh has found complete citations for over three-quarters of the clippings and has pieced together who gathered them, when they were placed in the scrapbook, and how the scrapbook survived.  

Though described as a singular scrapbook, the book is comprised of three different collections, with the final ca. 1940 edition holding pages from two older scrapbooks, differentiated by the page’s colors and editorial details. Clippings span from 1876 to 1941, and almost all the extant clippings were culled from the daily or weekly press reflecting the growth of art criticism during the 1870’s. About 50 percent of the newspaper clippings are from papers printed in New York City; about 20 percent are from Boston papers. This geographic distribution represents the two principal locales for exhibitions of Homer’s work during his lifetime, and indeed, most of these clippings are reviews of exhibitions in which Homer participated.

Ultimately the value of the Homer scrapbook is the insight it brings to the collective study of the artist.  The current study of the scrapbook helps us understand that Homer was attentive to and concerned with his own fame throughout his career. Importantly, it also provides further evidence that his extended family was concerned with his success and fame. Equally important, once again the myth of Homer as a hermit is debunked. Understanding the scrapbook’s contents augments what is known about how closely Homer monitored his dealers and the galleries and exhibitions in New York and Boston. Although he chose to live in Maine, he also took care to remain well informed about his own place in the art world. His professional reputation was important to him.

2. Winslow Homer’s prints

Winslow Homer created 295 unique prints during his lifetime. This element of his practice has been well studied, with important contributions by many scholars, including Lloyd Goodrich, Philip Beam, and more recently Ramey Mize and Judith Walsh. To date, however, there is not a stand-alone publication or website that brings together all his prints in one place.

The BCMA owns all but one of these prints and is well-positioned to host an online catalogue that makes available every print he created during his lifetime. For the second scholarly resource on this website, we will build a portal that includes high resolution reproductions of each print, a full record of its publication history, and a bibliography related to Homer’s practice as a printmaker.

3. Winslow Homer’s letters

The WHAC includes 150 letters that the artist wrote to family members, professional associates, and other artists. It is the largest collection of his correspondence. For the third scholarly resource on this website, we aim to bring together all the known letters written by Homer. The letters in the WHAC will take center stage, though we anticipate connecting with other museums and archives to learn about other letters. Though in this phase of the project we aspire simply to collect, transcribe, and reproduce every known letter, we envision developing this resource to include edited notes about the people, artworks, places, and events that are referenced in the letters. Again, this resource will be fully searchable.

This project’s goal is to make the WHAC known and accessible to a wide range of audiences. The BCMA aspires to create a website that will be a “go-to” resource for scholars, educators, students, and anyone who is interested in and inspired by Homer’s life and artistic practice. We appreciate the generous grant from the Wyeth Foundation to support this initiative, and, in the future, look forward to announcing our progress and the website’s public launch.