On the Stile

On the Stile dates from the summer of 1878, when Homer was working as a guest of Lawson Valentine at Houghton Farm, Valentine's country property in Mountainville, New York, near Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Highlands. The stay was among the most productive of Homer's career in watercolor: he produced approximately fifty watercolors at Houghton Farm in 1878 and 1879, a series that art historians have linked to a deliberate turn toward rural American pastoral subjects in the years following the Civil War. Homer and the Valentine family had been acquainted since boyhood in Boston; Homer renewed the connection after moving to New York City in 1859, where his brother Charles had a professional association with Lawson Valentine's paint and varnish business. Born in Boston on 24 February 1836, Homer began his career as a commercial printmaker and illustrator, contributing field sketches from the front lines of the Civil War to Harper's Weekly from 1861. He was largely self-taught as a painter and became one of the leading figures of American Realism. In 1883 he withdrew permanently to Prouts Neck, Maine, where the sea became the dominant subject of his work until his death in 1910. The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.