The Gale

The Gale is a dramatic artwork by Winslow Homer from around 1883–1893. It is owned by the Worcester Art Museum which is based in Massachusetts, USA.

The setting in front of us here features a mother with baby walking across the shore. The wind hammers into her as we also see waves crashing in the near distance. She bravely protects her vulnerable young child as she wanders acrss the horizontal of the painting. The sky is dark, bringing a scary atmosphere to the piece in which humanity is again shown as relatively powerless in the face of the brutality of nature. Homer would capture both the good and bad of life at sea, whilst also sometimes capturing scenes on the shore as found here. He loved and respected nature, and sometimes featured seascapes without any human involvement at all. The darkness here means that there is not much variety between the sky, the sea and the foreground, and the subject herself is also shadowed into more of a silhouette. The Gale captures many signature elements used in the latter part of Homer's career.

Research into this piece has revealed that the woman is likely to have been from the fishing community. Homer normally chose to capture man within scenes such as this, but the connection of mother and child brings an interesting aspect to this particular piece. The artist is believed to have created this artwork in England whilst staying there for several years. Initially this painting was actually known as The Coming Away of the Gale, before being shortened over time. The location is likely to have been Tynemouth, which was a small English village in which he stayed for two years in the early 1880s. The artist did not receive quite the reaction that he was hoping for, sadly, and so he is believed to have made amendments to the piece at a later date, although it is important to remember that he actually did this several times over and so was not an unusual. He even re-worked a piece after it had already been sold.

The Worcester Art Museum is believed to have purchased this painting directly, when normally public art galleries would be bequethed much of their display from local collectors. The painting's wide estimate with regards when it was painted suggests that it is not as famous or as well documented as some of the artist's other paintings. The name alone of Homer is enough to warrant this piece being given quite considerable prominence within their collection, but there are also a number of other notable names to be found here including the likes of Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Gauguin, Thomas Cole and John Singer Sargent. They focus, unsurprisingly, on American art but many other cultures and civilisations are also included within this eclectic collection which continues to draw large crowds each and every year.