Girl and Laurel

The painter of the Girl and Laurel, American Winslow Homer is considered to be one of the generation's greatest American artists. Before heading to New York, he was born in Boston and trained as an illustrator.

Homer had been assigned to draw scenes around the fore-lines of the American Civil War while he wrote for Harper's Weekly. Homer's portraits were mostly children and young ladies during the war, which reflected his joy in simpler times. Homer went to Paris, studied with the Impressionist Movement in Manet and Courbet. In 1879 Winslow Homer made a masterpiece of art known today as the Girl and Laurel painting. In the oil painting, a girl leans against some rocks near a laurel bush and holds a basket with laurel. She wears a blue dress with a white apron and white cap this was one of his paints that said a lot about his artistic passion and how he had love for women. It was unique and had so many things to learn from.

Inspiration for Girl and Laurel type paintings

At the end of the 1870s, prolific, innovative developments and elaborate performances were taking place. Homer was living in New York, where he illustrated magazines of illustration and established his career as a painter, but created his subjects in Massachusetts and New Jersey as a renowned seaside resort and in the Adirondacks and rural New York State. Homer had actually begun a 10-month stay in Paris and the French countryside late in 1866, inspired by the possibility of seeing two of his Civil War pictures on the Universelle Expo.

Homer shared his subject preferences, obsession with serial images, and their ability to integrate light outdoors, flat and basic forms and free brushwork into his work whilst his influence persisted among the French avant-garde practitioners. In 1875 Homer started working with watercolours as well as oil paintings and his success prompted him to give up his job as a freelance illustrator and later, to design the painting Girl and Laurel in 1879.

The effect he had on the art industry

Howard Pyle admired Homer and inspired his students to learn his art. The American illustrator and educator who was his pupil and friend, N. C. Wyeth expressed respect, and even encouraged and followed Homer to Maine. Elder Wyeth's appreciated his art which was considered to be "intense and utter" and can be seen in his early work Mowing (1907): possibly Homer's strict individualism is better illustrated by his counsel to other artists.