From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
"The Fountains at Night"--Bowdoin College Museum of Fine Arts - Winslow Homer
Black and white image of a painting or illustration of "The Fountains at Night" by Winslow Homer at the Bowdoin College Museum of Fine Arts This unusual oil painting by Winslow Homer constitutes the artist’s visual response to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The so-called “White City” exemplified American artists’ embrace of classical forms for public art. Frederick MacMonnies’s Columbian Fountain trumpeted the nation’s progress in art, science, and industry. In this painting, Homer depicts a corner of this monumental allegorical project as seen from a passing gondola. The Fountains at Night captures the dreamlike aspect of the Chicago fair, enhanced by the new invention of electric light. Female passengers in the gondola gaze raptly at the seahorses rising from the water; the long oars and diagonal poses of the faceless rowers further draw attention to the scintillating spectacle. Homer conveys the awesomeness of MacMonnies’s exuberant classicism in a decidedly unclassical manner with a cropped asymmetrical composition, monochromatic palette, and flattened form. These features bespeak the artist’s engagement with more modern sources of artistic inspiration, including Japanese prints and photography.
