The Adirondack Guide

Winslow Homer produced a number of watercolour portraits of his guide, Rufus Wallace. These were each titled simply as, The Adirondack Guide and came in the year 1892.

The particular piece in front of us here was completed using watercolor over graphite pencil on paper and can now be found within the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA. The artist signed the painting in black paint in the bottom left corner. The sheet itself is sized at 38.5 x 54.6 cm which is consistent with the artist working from a pad, with the artwork later being removed and sold separately. In travelling in this manner it would have been easier for the artist to work in this way, sketching first and then applying watercolours to individual pages of a sketchpad. The painting itself features the guide with his back to us, lightly turned to the side. He appears to be rowing backwards, and keeps an eye on his progress whilst the artist carefully captures the scene. The lake is depicted as a series of reflectons, repeating elements of the background which include trees and shrubs. Homer uses an interesting selection of tones for this piece which makes it particularly memorable, with a reddish brown standing out against the darker shades which surround it.

Homer produced many seascapes in his career, but this piece is decidely different. The surrounding foliage brings a more intimate feeling to the artwork, as well as how the subject was well known to the artist. The water is also calm, enabling the elderly man to travel across it in a relatively small and simple rowing boat. Normally Homer would be along the coastline, such as in Maine or the Caribbean, and those artworks would have a more lively, almost scary atmosphere by contrast. The Adirondack Guide feels more like a travel log, in a visual format, capturing a moment of their journey before they move on once more. This piece can be found at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, an institution which serves American art particularly well, but also covers other regions for those with more diverse tastes. Homer would continue this theme with further watercolours, with some dated a couple of years earlier and featuring the same guide from different angles.

This series of paintings bring to us the timeless beauty of the American landscape, in a similar manner to how the Hudson River School artists would work. This is despite Homer not actually including much of the landscape within these works. Instead we can imagine their location by studying the guide himself, who appears immersed in his surroundings, almost unaware of the artist's presence. Someone who works as a guide in this environment would surely have had an incredible love for the outdoors, and a calming personality brought about by spending so much time within it. Homer helps to get this across through his relaxed watercolour paintings and may have completed each one relatively quickly, after making initial sketches with graphite, whilst in the location himself.