Homer, Winslow (1836-1910)
Dad’s Coming!
1873
Oil on wood, 22.9 x 34.9 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
A woman holding a baby stands near a young boy who perches in the tipped-up end of a rowboat that has been pulled onto a sandy beach in this horizontal painting. All the people have light skin. The turquoise and aquamarine-blue ocean beyond meets the pale blue sky at the horizon line, about halfway up the composition. To our left of center, one end of the wooden rowboat has been propped on what might be a fallen piling on the sandy, rocky beach. The boy sitting in the bow faces our left almost in profile, and wears a round, brimmed straw hat over brown hair, a brown, long-sleeved shirt, and charcoal-gray pants. His face turns away from us so we only see his cheek and the curve of his ear. To our right, the woman’s dark hair is pulled up and she wears a white apron over a long brown skirt. She stands angled to our right and looks over the shoulder of the blond baby she holds up against her chest. The child is dressed in a white skirt, blue sash, a red jacket, and black shoes. The beach around the people is strewn with another rowboat, large boulders, a wooden barrel, and fishing nets hung over a tall frame to dry. A few tufts of scrubby grass grow in the sand around the woman’s feet. The white sails of several ships line the horizon in the deep distance. Thin, pale peach clouds float across an ice-blue sky. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint in the lower left corner: “WINSLOW HOMER 1873.” (NGA)