The Gulf Stream
A Black sailor lies on a dismasted boat as sharks circle, with a storm and a ship in the distance: the last of Homer's great pictures of man facing nature. Full commentary ↓
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The Gulf Stream is an oil painting by Winslow Homer (1899; reworked by 1906) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It measures 71.4 × 124.8 cm.
In the pictureA small boat, its mast broken and its rudder gone, drifts on a rough sea. A Black sailor lies shirtless on the deck, propped on his elbow, while several sharks circle the boat, cutting through reddish water. On the horizon at the right a waterspout rises, and far off to the left a sailing ship passes. The sailor does not look at it.
BackgroundHomer painted it in 1899, after traveling to the Bahamas and Florida. The Gulf Stream is a warm current that flows from the Caribbean into the Atlantic, and shipwrecks were frequent along this route. When told the picture was too hopeless, Homer is said to have replied curtly that the sailor would be rescued in the end. It is counted among the most powerful sea paintings in American art.
Puzzle tipAs a puzzle, it has many sea pieces mixing blue, green and red tones. The shapes of the boat, the figure and the sharks are distinct, so complete them first, and divide the sea into pieces with white foam and pieces without. The sky is bright on the left and dark toward the storm on the right, so use brightness to find each piece's horizontal position.
- Artist
- American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine
- Culture
- American
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 71.4 x 124.8 cm
- Credit line
- Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1906
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
In these collections: Sea and Waterside Masterpiece Puzzles
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