After a brief apprenticeship with a lithographer, Winslow Homer became a freelance illustrator for Ballou’s Pictorial in Boston, then for Harper’s Weekly in New York in 1859. Harper’s Weekly sent him to the front when the Civil War broke out, resulting in some of the most important visual reports on the war in print. Homer’s wood engravings depicted the war dispassionately, showing the mundane activities of the soldiers as often as the battles and conflicts. After the war, Homer took up painting and spent time in Paris in 1866 and 1867, but, except for some Barbizon influence, was largely unchanged by the experience.
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Homer’s early work was often painted plein-air and depicted young men and women or children playing and working outside. His interest in the outdoors and in a simple agrarian lifestyle, are typified in Answering the Horn, painted in 1876. In 1873 Homer began to paint in watercolor, as well, and used it as often as oil. Homer’s career changed markedly with a trip to the coast of England in 1881 and 1882, where the artist encountered the majesty and fury of the sea and the struggle of men and women against its power. Homer settled at Prout’s Neck in Maine along the rocky coast, and the sea remained his major focus for the duration of his career.
Conservation studies of Answering the Horn, undertaken in 2000, revealed major reworking of the painting by the artist. X-rays indicate the standing male figure once held a large horn in his lifted hand, and the horizon line at the left showed extensive changes.