The painting room of Winslow Homer's studio in Prout's Neck, Me. / Trent Bell/Portland Museum of Art. Source: cbsnews.com
This crisp, cool early fall seems a perfect season to take the short trip down the coast to visit the newly opened studio of one of America’s defining landscape artists, Winslow Homer (1836-1910). In 1893, Homer moved into the transformed Carriage House on a plot of family land in Prout’s Neck, a few miles outside of Portland, Me., where he lived and worked until his death. It is here that he produced the work that came to define him. “He could walk down to the cliff walk, see what he needed to see, sketch, come back up here and then paint in the studio,” said Mark Bessire, director of the Portland Museum of Art, which just finished the five-year, $2.8 million renovation of the studio.
It is the first time the public will see the physical space the reclusive artist worked in. In honor of the studio’s unveiling, the Portland Museum has mounted a new exhibit devoted to the work Homer produced at Prout’s Neck, including the famed “Weatherbeaten.” In the brooding and beautiful atmosphere of this idyllic land, it’s easy to feel Winslow Homer’s intent, which is as Bessire states, “He’s interested in telling you about the power of nature in a single wave. He wants you to feel the spray, be in that painting itself.”
