Sunlight on the Coast

Sunlight on the Coast was completed by Winslow Homer in 1890. It now resides at the Toledo Museum of Art in the US after being gifted to the institution by Edward Drummond Libbey.

This relatively straight forward composition depicts a tall splash of sea water to the left hand side, with other waves drifting off to our right. A rocky shoreline appears in the bottom left corner of the piece, which places the viewer on land. There is then a view out to sea, with the sky slowly merging with the waves underneath it. The overall piece is dimly lit, allowing sections to fuse together in this manner, but with a bright contrast provided in the foreground. Despite the simplistic composition, Homer chose to use a large canvas of over a metre in width in order to incorporate some stunning detail on the waves themselves, which can only be understood by those fortunate enough to see the painting in person, up close. It is a majestic seascape in which he studies everv last movement of this complex natural setting. Elsewhere in his career Homer would incorporate human activity alongside scenes such as this.

Homer delivers a contrasting piece here, where the sea and the coast fight against each other in a seemingly endless battle. The rocky nature of the foreground ensures it's survival against this onslaught, which in other paintings he would put humans as the vulnerable elements. Despite its title of Sunlight on the Coast, relatively little light comes through in this piece, making it a surprising choice of title. It was also unusual for him to work diagonally with the main focal point, suggesting that he may have been experimenting here in a small way. Normally, he would have placed the coast line face-on, running across the horizontal of the artwork, in parallel with the horizon higher up. Homer was regularly focused on the battle between humanity and nature, but in this example chooses to replace us with the rocky shoreline on which he would have been sat whilst sketching the initial drawing. The oil version would likely have been completed from the comfort of his own studio.

The Toledo Museum of Art host this piece alongside a good selection of other artworks from his career. They have a number of etchings which might surprise and impress his followers, some of whom would be unaware of his work in that genre. Homer was an illustrator in the early part of his career and these talents could be applied to other mediums over the next few decades of his life. Etching would clearly fit well with that, and over time he also mastered the use of oils and watercolours. The institution in Toledo covers American art history impressively well and Homer is a key contributor to that, with a good variety of his content found within its collection, including some of his work in the Caribbean which came later.