Weary and Dissatisfied With Everything (The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. VIII)
Original title: Weary and Dissatisfied With Everything (The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. VIII)
kurzbeschreibung
Late in the evening, a man and a woman stand on a street beneath a full moon. Winslow Homer drew this black-and-white illustration in November 1869 for The Galaxy magazine.
Description
On the right, a gentleman in a suit turns away from his companion, his head tilted slightly to one side. On the left, a woman in a voluminous, layered dress with ruffles and a wide belt holds a hat in her hand and gazes thoughtfully toward him. Hints of houses and streetlamps place the couple in a city; above them stretches a dark sky with a bright moon. Clothing and surroundings are rendered with great precision.
Context
Homer supplied the image for the November 1869 issue of The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading. At the time he drew regularly for various periodicals, producing wood engravings for both literary and journalistic texts. What is negotiated here are the role models of late nineteenth-century urban life.
Impact
First the moonlight catches the eye, then the distance between the two: the woman in her elaborate dress and the turned-away man stand side by side without finding each other, and in that lies the tension the title names as discontent. Nocturnal lighting and thin lines give the picture a quiet, almost melancholy tone.
Technique
For printing, the motif was cut into a woodblock and then reproduced. How precisely the technique works is evident in the thin lines and high level of detail typical of magazine illustrations of those years.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)