It is rare that an artist uses with equal success both water color and
oil. With Winslow Homer one hardly knows which to admire more, his oil
paintings or his water colors. His oils are, perhaps, more bare, more
elemental than the water colors, but the tones are harsher and often less
true. In the winter of 1885-1886, Homer visited the Bahama Islands, where
a new world of color was opened to his eyes. The water colors which he
made during this and subsequent voyages are among the finest things he
ever did. Among these is The Conch Divers: negroes on the deck of a sloop
are watching the reappearance of a diver who has just come up alongside
with some shells in his hand. The Island of New Providence with its palms
is seen in the distance at the right. The composition is admirable; the
figures are drawn with great power.
“It is Winslow Homer’s distinction that he was the first American painter
to use an American idiom,” writes William Howe Downes. “Not only his
subjects, but his manner of treating them; not only his motives, but his
point of view; not only his material, but the style and sentiment in which
he clothes it, have the stamp of Americanism indelibly impressed upon
them.” This spirited statement might be qualified by the observation that
it is George Inness and Fuller who express more truly the spirit of
American rural life; while it is Homer who expresses the spirit of the
frontiersman, the deep-sea fisherman, and all those whose lives bring them
face to face with the bare facts of the unmitigated elements.
[Moonlit Surf, Paul Dougherty, 1877-]