Sunday Morning in Virginia – From the Painting by Winslow Homer in the National Academy of Design (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. XXIV)
Original title: Sunday Morning in Virginia – From the Painting by Winslow Homer in the National Academy of Design (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. XXIV)
kurzbeschreibung
Unlike many contemporary prints that presented African Americans after the Civil War as types, this 1880 wood engraving by Winslow Homer places a small group in a plain interior and has them read a book together. The print was made as an illustration for Harper's Weekly, after a painting by Homer.
Description
Four women and a child are spread across the bare room: the adults on stools and chairs, the child on the floor, a standing woman at the right edge with a stick in her hand. Arranged in a horizontal row, all are absorbed in the shared reading. Light enters from the left and casts distinct shadows on the right side of the figures.
Context
The source was a Homer painting made during his stay in Virginia in the 1870s, where he recorded the lives of formerly enslaved people. On May 22, 1880, the wood engraving appeared in Harper's Weekly, one of the most widely circulated illustrated magazines in the United States. The subject reflects the efforts of African Americans toward education and literacy after the Civil War.
Impact
A quiet, dignified mood pervades the print and brings the sitters' thirst for knowledge to the fore. Realistic rendering and a clear layout make the image immediate and credible without sentimental exaggeration.
Technique
For the wood engraving, the harder end grain of a woodblock was worked, and the black was transferred from it to paper. The finest lines and details could thus be captured, giving the black-and-white reproduction high graphic precision.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)