Winslow Homer

Listening to a BBC Radio 4 documentary about Winslow Homer’s time in my home town of Cullercoats, which was an artistic enclave in the late nineteenth century. The incidental music caught my attention, recalled it as the tune Starless but performed by Northumbrian band The Unthanks rather than it being the epic original from King Crimson’s 1974 Red album.

Homer, a watercolourist, is perhaps one of the greatest nineteenth century American artists…but by all accounts a celibate recluse who had none of the celebrity nor renown of Turner…I blogged about him many years ago, his paintings hold a particular fascination for me born (poetically as I was) with seaspray on my skin and coaldust in my veins.

Winslow Homer’s Odyssey

Wiki entry on Homer

Winslow Homer

Cullercoats

Why Homer came to Cullercoats

Having written this blog I ended up on Facebook and discovered a group related to my old junior school, which was a classic set of Victorian buildings, that Homer would almost certainly have walked past on my occasions during his two-year stay in the village. It was pulled down for modern flats when I had done a single term there as a 7-year old.