The Gulf Stream is an 1899 oil on canvas by Winslow Homer. The painting shows a man in a small boat struggling against the waves of the sea. Homer vacationed often in Florida, Cuba and the Caribbean. This painting alludes to John Singleton Copley's 1778 composition, Watson and the Shark (see lower right).
In American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, Robert Hughes contrasts these two pictures.
First, Copley's shark jaw is alien in form...
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The Gulf Stream is an 1899 oil on canvas by Winslow Homer. The painting shows a man in a small boat struggling against the waves of the sea. Homer vacationed often in Florida, Cuba and the Caribbean. This painting alludes to John Singleton Copley's 1778 composition, Watson and the Shark (see lower right).
In American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, Robert Hughes contrasts these two pictures.
First, Copley's shark jaw is alien in form and most likely drawn from second-hand accounts. Homer, having lived near water, correctly captures the shark's anatomy.
Secondly, in Copley's version, a rescue is near: the horizon is near and light in tone, and many boats, within the harbour and probably docked, are seen in the background. Homer's version, with its circling sharks, broken mast, a lone figure tied to the boat, looming water spout, and at open sea give a sense of being lost at sea. There is a ship in the far left, but it so distant as to suggest that society, while present,...
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