Hurricane, Bahamas

Here we find another example of Winslow Homer's interest in the Bahamas. This interesting piece was delivered in watercolours and arrived in 1898, which was towards the end of his career.

Palm trees are used in the background to communicate the activity that the artist would have experienced at the time. Wind would sweep around this environment as the hurricane passed by. Dark clouds can be seen in the distance, adding to this feeling of menace to the local community who patiently hide within their homes below. Homer chooses an unusual compositional style here, with homes cropped in half, leaving our full focus on what occurs above. The small houses are tightly packed together, as if congregated together for protection. We can spot a small slither of sea to the left hand side but the horizon is delberately placed at a low level, giving the sky much more room within this painting. The angle of the palms would suggest that the strong wind is coming in from our left hand side, but hurricanes tend to be a little more varied in direction than everyday wind would be. Homer became interested in hurricanes and other types of storms in the latter part of his career, often depicting shipwrecks as well.

Hurricane, Bahamas can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US and this venue offers a number of artworks from the career of Winslow Homer. They have an excellent survey of his career, and cover American art particularly well, whilst also touching on a wide range of other cultures and civilisations. They have Homer represented in all of oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, enabling visitors to get a good understanding of the breadth and variety to be found within his career. Hurricane, Bahamas from 1898 has not perhaps been as well researched as other items from his lifetime but much of the content speaks for itself, and we also can place it accurately within his movements of that decade. The artist took several trips to the Caribbean and this region would inspire a number of artworks, many of which were based in and around the sea and shoreline. Today the artist is rightly regarded as a key American painter who impressed in both oils and watercolours.

Homer helped to lift American art from something of a niche that followed in the shadows of European art to something more unique and interesting. He delivered stunning work in a variety of genres but it was his seascapes which became the most famous. Most were based in the US but towards the end of his career he would spend time elsewhere and found new sources of inspiration within these alternative environments. The Caribbean would be one of those and it became an ideal location for any artist who specialised in the genres that Homer did. In return, he added the local people into some of these paintings in a way that others had not done previously and also highlighted the beauty of this region.