T.J. McNamara: At last, the balance is altering

Winslow Homer's <i>The Herring Net</i> depicts the grim toil of fishermen far out to sea. Photo / Supplied

The American Art Wing of the immense Art Institute of Chicago contains rich treasures of painting. One of the most arresting works shows life on the Atlantic far from Chicago. Fishermen working off the coast of Maine is portrayed in an epic masterpiece called The Herring Net by Winslow Homer. Two men in a small dinghy far out in the ocean are heaving on a net full of shining herrings. The sea runs in great swells as the fish are hauled over the side. One of the figures is sitting on the gunwale right over the water while the other lifts the weight of the laden net.

The oilskins of these anonymous toilers make them monumental shapes as sculptural as anything by Michelangelo and with the same concentration of physical strength. The mother ship from which the fishermen are working can be dimly seen on the horizon. The oars of the little boat are stowed in the bow and make a cross subtly symbolic of the sacrifice their toil involves. The painting is as unforgettable and, in its own way as immortal, as the great American novel of the sea, Melville's Moby Dick.

This painting comes late in Homer's career and is part of a group of sombre paintings of the life of fishermen on the Grand Banks. The paintings have elements of melancholy grandeur. The men are heroic with their waterproof clothing like armour but in other paintings they are shown far from the mother ship with the fog moving in or lost far out to sea without hope of help.

The work of Winslow Homer leads the way in a shift of American attitudes toward their art. Last century they were so proud of the way the Abstract Expressionists and the Pop Artists had made New York the centre of the art world that there was less emphasis on the great achievements of the 19th century. The balance is altering. In Washington, as well as the National Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery housed in the majestic former Archives building, now offers grand insight into the art and history of America.

Furthermore, a huge exhibition, at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, devoted to the way artists depicted American life in the Victorian era, has increased awareness of the enormous value of paintings by academics such as Eastman Johnson and painters of frontier life like Caleb Bingham. The exhibition also showed the variety and depth of Homer's achievement.

Several of his paintings became symbols of American identity but he was considered out of touch by the avant garde of the 20th century who stressed formal qualities and the process of painting above narrative. The New York show included such admired paintings as Crack the Whip and Breezing Up but they were only part of his vast body of work.

Crack the Whip shows a boys' game where the young barefoot lads straight out of a little red school house in the background form a line and swing in a circle till the force spills the ones at the end on to the ground. It is part of Homer's early work which showed picturesque aspects of rural America.

Breezing Up, full of air and light, depicts three boys and their father who have been fishing in their yacht sailing home with a brisk breeze. It is probably the single best-known painting in America and an early example of Homer's wonderful skills in conveying the moods of the sea.

Homer was a deeply sincere humanist and his work frequently goes far beyond the simply anecdotal to issues of national identity.

The event that had the most impact on his career was the American Civil War. He drew images from the war that were reproduced in the famous magazine Harper's Weekly as wood engravings. He developed his oil painting in parallel.

As well as drawing sharpshooters and details of camp and battle he painted one work that brought instant success. Prisoners from the Front shows a Union general looking at four ragged Confederate prisoners. The tense exchange of looks between a Confederate officer and the Union man epitomises the hatreds the war produced.

After the war Homer painted one of his most remarkable images, The Veteran in a New Field, which was in the New York show. It is a small painting, not spectacular, but very moving. An ex-soldier is harvesting wheat with a scythe, his uniform jacket on the ground behind him. It is at once redemptive in the sense of turning swords into ploughshares but it is also profoundly symbolic of the harvest of death in the war. If you look hard at it you can see Homer emphasising the scythe as a symbol of death and time. At first he painted it with a cradle extending from the blade. At that time this was a modern device to make harvesting easier. He painted out the cradle to make the implement more of a wicked, old-fashioned scythe cutting down the stalks of a wide field of wheat under a blue sky. The work has faded and the cradle can now be dimly made out.

Famously Homer moved to a house on a bleak headland in New England called Prout's Neck. His isolated house was only a few metres from the sea and he began to paint the vivid Impressionist pictures of the sea crashing against the rocks that are the most admired of his paintings today. They are splendid but the toilers and the veteran touch the heart in a very special way.

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