1865, Winslow Homer, The Brush Harrow -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the Fogg label: What is the role of art in a time of national mourning? "The Brush Harrow"—one of Homer’s poignant elegies to lives and communities affected by the U.S. Civil War—engages this question. In the 1860s, a brush harrow was an already outmoded tool, using logs and branches to clear a field for the springtime planting. Homer subtly renders the war’s human, socioeconomic, and environmental impact in this metaphorical scene of young children and an aged war horse laboring with imperfect tools in the stead of absent adults. As a freelance illustrator for various New York periodicals and a war correspondent for "Harper’s Weekly," Homer knew that personal stories and measured compositions were effective ways to frame national events. When the painting debuted at the 1866 exhibition of the National Academy of Design, various contemporary critics noted how the restrained figuration, palette, and scale amplified the power of the work.
From the Met exhibition label: One of Homer’s most poignant Civil War subjects, The Brush Harrow depicts two children laboring to prepare a field for spring planting using an outmoded agricultural tool—a harrow made of tree branches. The quiet scene shows the war’s human, socioeconomic, and environmental impact on the home front, where young boys do the work of absent men. It is one of three canvases of nearly the same size—along with Prisoners from the Front and Veteran in a New Field (both on view nearby)—that the artist painted in 1865. As a group, the works demonstrate the variety of Homer’s symbolic approaches to rendering the epic conflict and its tragic and hopeful aftermath.
1865, Winslow Homer, The Brush Harrow -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the Fogg label: What is the role of art in a time of national mourning? "The Brush Harrow"—one of Homer’s poignant elegies to lives and communities affected by the U.S. Civil War—engages this question. In the 1860s, a brush harrow was an already outmoded tool, using logs and branches to clear a field for the springtime planting. Homer subtly renders the war’s human, socioeconomic, and environmental impact in this metaphorical scene of young children and an aged war horse laboring with imperfect tools in the stead of absent adults. As a freelance illustrator for various New York periodicals and a war correspondent for "Harper’s Weekly," Homer knew that personal stories and measured compositions were effective ways to frame national events. When the painting debuted at the 1866 exhibition of the National Academy of Design, various contemporary critics noted how the restrained figuration, palette, and scale amplified the power of the work.
From the Met exhibition label: One of Homer’s most poignant Civil War subjects, The Brush Harrow depicts two children laboring to prepare a field for spring planting using an outmoded agricultural tool—a harrow made of tree branches. The quiet scene shows the war’s human, socioeconomic, and environmental impact on the home front, where young boys do the work of absent men. It is one of three canvases of nearly the same size—along with Prisoners from the Front and Veteran in a New Field (both on view nearby)—that the artist painted in 1865. As a group, the works demonstrate the variety of Homer’s symbolic approaches to rendering the epic conflict and its tragic and hopeful aftermath.