The Bridle Path, White Mountains

Synonymous with his depictions of post Civil War life for the everyday America and for capturing the country's wide, lush wildernesses, especially it's coasts, Winslow Homer's works remain some of the most widely respected today when it comes to American landscape art.

The Bridle Path, White Mountains was painted in 1868 as oil on canvas. It show a single female rider making her way across the New Hampshire White Mountains. Homer's work often focuses on singular women, reflective of a changing trend at the time which saw middleclass women starting to find more independent roles in American society. His close relationship with his own mother, who was herself artistic in nature, versus his more turbulent relationship with his tough, businessman father, is also perhaps why much of his work focuses on capturing women in their everyday life moments.

The Bridle Path, White Mountains features a more genteel woman, but this class of woman would disappear from his work entirely as his career progressed, as he began focusing instead primarily on the working class. Although Homer had no formal training at this time, he credited his visit to Paris during the 1860's when he was on assignment with Harper's as helping him to practise and hone his craft of capturing landscapes. Despite the fact that the foreground of The Bridle Path, White Mountains is a woman on horseback, it is clear that Homer intends the subject to be the mountain and path itself, with the jagged, dusty path breaking through harshly against the contrasting hazy background.

Secretive when it came to his inspirations and techniques, Homer nevertheless seemed to have become inspired by artists such as Monet and began to paint in watercolour. He felt it important that art should focus on the artist's own visual integrity, and that artists themselves "should never look at pictures" in order to keep their own personal style intact and free from real-world influences. It was around the time that The Bridle Path, White Mountains was painted that Homer decided to give up his career as a commercial illustrator entirely and focus instead on his watercolour works. Despite critical and financial success during his lifetime, Homer remained on the fringes of society, often choosing to live secluded or travel, with his trips around America and to Europe influencing his marine and countryside works in equal measure.