Two Boys Watching Schooners 1880

Winslow Homer made this watercolour painting, Two Boys Watching Schooners, during a career that coincided with the rise of new art institutions in America. Homer’s images of leisure and recreation are often interpreted as uncomplicated celebrations of American life, but they also participated in a cultural project of nation-building that followed the Civil War. With their backs to us, the two boys seem focused on the horizon, facing out towards the schooners in the distance. The sea itself was a site of rapid change in the United States, as fishing and whaling industries gave way to trade. To get a better understanding of how the painting relates to its cultural context, we might look at the artist’s biography, or research the growth of tourism in the United States during the second half of the 19th century. Ultimately, the meaning we find in it depends on the social and institutional histories we bring to it.