Winslow Homer and the Adirondacks

After first visiting the Adirondacks in 1870, Winslow Homer returned to the area at least twenty-one times to paint, draw, and participate in the various recreational activities the park offered (Tatham xii).  As a visitor in the Adirondacks following the Civil War, Homer witnessed the first influx of tourists and sportsmen in the region and as result, his work reflected perceptions of the Adirondacks as a space for outdoor recreation and provided a commentary on the post-war era as a whole.  Through his paintings, Homer illustrated changing perceptions of humans’ relationship with the natural world that characterized past and current debates surrounding human use of the Adirondack Park.   

One of Homer’s first paintings of the Adirondacks, The Trapper (1870), illustrates a relatively novel perception of humans’ relationship with nature.  The painting focuses on a man standing on a log on the West Bay of Mink Pond (Tatham, 25).  Homer depicts the man on top of a log and distinguishes him from a sportsman or tourist by his rustic clothing (Tatham, 25).  By elevating the man and making him the focus of the painting, Homer captures the role reversals that take place in the wilderness that Ralph Waldo Emerson alluded to in his poem The Adirondacs (Tatham, 29).  In the Adirondacks, the self-sufficient woodsman stands at the pinnacle of society.  In addition, the man is a portrayed not as a tourist, but someone who lives among nature, representing the new order and post-war vision in which man and nature are members of the same community (Tatham, 29). 

Interestingly, Homer offers a drastically different view of the relationship between humans and nature in Two Guides (1877).  In comparison to the undisturbed environment painted in The Trapper, the men in Two Guides, each holding axes, stand in an area cleared of trees and beside a recently cut tree (Tatham, 72).  The guides are also engaged with each other, unlike the trapper who is focused on only the wilderness, (Tatham, 72).  The guides are presumably more interested in the sportsmen they attend to than in nature itself and therefore seem less unified with the natural world (Tatham, 72).  In this way, Homer denotes two contrasting and existing views of humans and their interactions with the environment:  one in which humans and nature exist in a more symbiotic way, and another in which man controls and alters the environment.

It is easy to view Homer’s paintings as mere reflections of the recreational uses of the Adirondack Park and as commentaries on the growing presence of humans in nature.  Yet, the subtleties of Homer’s paintings and exactly how he portrays humans among the environment distinguish paintings like The Trapper from paintings like Two Guides.  Each painting speaks to a different perception of humans and their relationship with the natural world and amazingly Homer proves to be quite prescient as the tree hugging woodsman and the oppressive gamesman continue to be at the heart of debates surrounding human use of the Adirondacks today.  Comparing two attitudes towards nature, Homer’s paintings are almost poetic in how they convey American attitudes in the post-Civil War era and foreshadow future attitudes and conflicts.  Homer is therefore unique, not only in his abilities as a painter, but in his ability to tell the American story.

The Trapper (1870)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_-_An_Adirondack_Lake.jpg

Two Guides (1877) 

Sources:

Tatham, David. Winslow Homer in the Adirondacks. New York: Syracuse University Press. 1996, 

Print.