In Winslow Homer: American Passage, biographer William R. Cross unveils his subject’s role as the visual counterpart to Mark Twain and his connections to contemporaries like the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler and the poets Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Cross also illuminates Homer’s social context and his sensitivity to the fundamental role of design in his work.  

 

Homer was witness to the rhythms of sea, storm, tide, and season. The period in which he lived included the U.S. Civil War, colonial tyranny, invention and industrialization, and the challenge of achieving a just and equitable society in the Gilded Age. Homer’s astonishing breadth of subject, media, and perspective reflects his restless mind, empathic heart, and innovative hand. His legacy comprises few answers but poses a broad range of enduring, entrancing questions.