At Sea – Signalling a Passing Steamer – Drawn by Winslow Homer (Every Saturday, Vol. II, New Series) 1871

Winslow Homer made this wood engraving, "At Sea – Signalling a Passing Steamer," for *Every Saturday*, a weekly literary magazine. Mass media publishing was still quite new in the United States, and Homer found work as an illustrator for magazines such as this one, and *Harper's Weekly*. The print depicts a scene on the deck of a ship in rough waters. In the 19th century, sea travel was much more common than air travel, and yet it was still a dangerous undertaking. What did it mean to depict the lives of ordinary sailors for a wide audience? I think it was part of a broader democratization of imagery at the time, putting working-class people on the pages of popular magazines like this one. The image gives us an insight into that world, and the popularity of the magazine tells us something about middle-class readers' curiosity about the wider world. We can use these publications as historical resources to understand better the social and institutional contexts in which art is made and consumed.