Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
The Gulf Stream
Winslow Homer · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- Winslow Homer (1836–1910)
- Date
- 1899 (reworked by 1906)
- Dimensions
- 71.4 x 124.8 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
The Gulf Stream shows a Black sailor alone on a small, dismasted fishing boat drifting in a rough sea. Sharks circle the hull, a waterspout rises on the horizon, and a sailing ship passes in the far distance, seemingly unaware of him.
A closer look
The man lies on the deck, leaning on one elbow, looking away from the sharks with a calm, almost resigned expression. Stalks of sugar cane spill from the hold, suggesting he has come from the Caribbean. Homer based the picture on sketches from his winter trips to the Bahamas and Florida. When viewers asked what happened next, he answered dryly that the man would be rescued. The painting has been read as an image of human endurance against nature and, more recently, as a reflection on the history of Black Americans.
History of the painting
The Gulf Stream was first shown in 1900 and did not sell at once; some viewers found its subject too disturbing. When it was shown again at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1906, members of the jury urged the Metropolitan Museum to buy it, and the museum did so the same year, one of the few works by Homer acquired by a museum during his lifetime. It has hung at the Met ever since.
