Sparrow Hall

late 1870s

A recluse in Gloucester

In the late 1870s, whether from disappointments with women or some other emotional turmoil, Homer became reclusive, abandoned urban social life and lived instead in Gloucester, for a while even in the secluded Eastern Point Lighthouse with the keeper's family. Watching the fishermen, the sea and the marine weather, he rediscovered his love of the sea and found a rich source of themes in it.

spring 1881 – November 1882

England: the village of Cullercoats

In 1881 Homer set off on his second and last trip abroad, to England, and from the spring of 1881 to November 1882 lived in the village of Cullercoats on the North Sea, depicting the courage of fishermen and above all of women: gutting fish, mending nets, waiting for the men at the water's edge. The period profoundly changed his later work: his palette grew sober and his pictures larger. Of the local women he wrote: “The women are the working bees.”

1882

Return: “a very different Homer”

In November 1882 Homer returned to the United States and showed his English watercolours in New York. Critics noticed the change at once: “He is a very different Homer from the one we knew”, his pictures were “works of High Art”, and his women were no longer “dolls who flaunt their millinery” but sturdy, fearless wives and mothers.

summer 1883

Moves to Prouts Neck

In the summer of 1883 Homer moved from New York to Prouts Neck, a peninsula ten miles south of Portland, Maine, and lived there for the rest of his life, using solitude to work. He settled on the family estate, in a remodelled carriage house seventy-five feet from the ocean.

1884

Death of his mother

In 1884 Homer's mother died: his first teacher and the strongest influence on him. After her death he became a “parent” to his ageing but domineering father, and his sister-in-law Martha (“Mattie”) became his closest female intimate.

winter 1884 – 1885

Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas

In the winter of 1884–1885 Homer travelled to Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas, painting a series of watercolours commissioned by Century Magazine: the storm-tossed green sea of Prouts Neck gave way to the sparkling blue skies of the Caribbean, and for Edith Blake, wife of the governor of the Bahamas, he painted “Children Under a Palm Tree”. “A Garden in Nassau” (1885) is one of the best of these watercolours, but they proved too advanced for traditional buyers.