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Composite view of 1955.1481.4 and 1955.1481.5.

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1980 conservation, after treatment, raking light

Winslow Homer

American, 1836–1910

Undertow

1886

In 1883, Homer witnessed an event near Atlantic City, New Jersey, that allegedly inspired this dramatic painting. Rescuers try to haul ashore two women, weighed down by their waterlogged bathing dresses, in danger of being pulled beneath the waves by an undertow. The figures appear as three-dimensional and solid as the ancient Greek marble statues on which they were modeled. Yet despite their muscularity and apparent strength, their struggle suggests human frailty in the face of the sea’s awesome power.

Medium oil on canvas
Dimensions 29 13/16 x 47 5/8 in. (75.7 x 121 cm) Frame: 40 3/16 x 58 7/8 x 4 in. (102.1 x 149.5 x 10.2 cm)
Object Number 1955.4
Acquisition Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status On View

Image Caption

Winslow Homer, Undertow, 1886, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.4

Select Bibliography

Simpson, Marc, and Susannah Maurer. Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2005. Kurtz, Charles M. National Academy Notes & Complete Catalogue. Sixty Second Spring Exhibition. National Academy of Design, New-York. Exhibition catalogue. New York: National Academy of Design, 1887. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Fifty-eighth Annual Exhibition. Exhibition catalogue. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1888. Königliche Akademie der bildenden Künste. Ausstellung Amerikanischer Kunst. Exhibition catalogue. Berlin: Verlag von F. Bruckmann, A.-G., 1910. Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Winslow Homer Memorial Exhibition: Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1911. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Four: First Two Rooms. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Sixteen: Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1961. Wildenstein & Company. An Exhibition of Treasures from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts: Paintings, drawings & rare silver, for the benefit of the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, inc. (CRIA). Exhibition catalogue. New York: Wildenstein & Company, 1967. Goodrich, Lloyd. The Graphic Art of Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. Foreword by Donald H. Karshan. New York: Museum of Graphic Art, 1968. Goodrich, Lloyd. Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. New York?, 1973. Murphy, Alexandra. Winslow Homer in the Clark Collection. Exhibition catalogue. With contributions by Rafael Fernandez and Jennifer Gordon. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1986. Cikovsky, Nicolai, Charles Moffett, and Franklin Kelly. Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, DC: The National Gallery of Art, 1995. Boston Daily Advertiser. "The Fine Arts: Brisk Opening of the Exhibition Season for 1887Events of the Week." January 24, 1887. Stonehouse, Augustus. "Winslow Homer." Art Review 1 (February 1887). New York World. "The Academy Exhibition." April 2, 1887 New York Times. "The Academy of Design: A Well Chosen Exhibition. Strong Work by AcademiciansPortraits by MunkacsyHomer's 'Undertow'Battlepiece by Gaul." April 2, 1887. New York Herald. "The National Academy of Design." April 2, 1887. "The National Academy of Design: 62nd Annual Exhibition." New York Daily Tribune, 2 April 1887. "The Fine Arts: Good Work at the Academy." The Critic 7 (April 9, 1887). Tait, John R. "The Academy Exhibition." The Mail and Express. April 11, 1887. New York Evening Post. "The Academy Exhibition." April 14, 1887. "Fine Arts: The Academy Exhibition, I." The Nation 44 (April 14, 1887). Rensselaer, Mariana van. "Fine Arts: The Academy Exhibition, I." The Independent. April 14, 1887. Commercial Advertiser. "At the Academy." April 16, 1887. "Art Notes." Art Interchange 18 (April 23, 1887). Hitchcock, Ripley. "Spring Exhibition: National Academy." Art Review 1 (April 1887). New York Sun. "The Spring Picture Exhibitions." May 8, 1887. Cook, Clarence. "The National Academy of Design: The 62nd Annual Exhibition." The Studio: A Weekly Journal of Fine Art 2 (May 1887). "The National Academy Exhibition." The Art Amateur 16 (May 1887). Rensselaer, Mariana van. Six Portraits. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1889. Downes, William Howe. "What Pictures Should the American Section of the World's Fair Contain?" The Fine Arts, Boston Evening Transcript, August 22, 1892. "Some Living American Painters: Critical Conversations by Howe and Torrey, Winslow Homer, N.A.". Art Interchange 32 (May 1894). Downes, William Howe. Twelve Great Artists. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1900. "The Collector." The Art Amateur 44, no. 3 (February 1901). National Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York: J. T. White: 1901. Morton, Frederick W. "Art of Winslow Homer." Brush and Pencil 10, no. 1 (April 1902): 405, 4751, 534. Caffin, Charles H. American Masters of Painting. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902. Caffin, Charles H. "American Painters of the Sea." The Critic 46 (December 1903). "Notes from the Art Museums." Brush and Pencil 15, no. 1 (January 1905): 60–65. Clarke, Sir Caspar Purden. "Still the Hoi Polloi, Bon Ton, and Metropolitan are Daft on European Art." Brush and Pencil 19, no. 3 (March 1905): 99–109. Cox, Kenyon. "Three Pictures by Winslow Homer in the Metropolitan Museum." The Burlington Magazine 12, no. 56 (November 1907): 123–24. Caffin, Caffin H. The Story of American Painting: The Evolution of Painting in America from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1907. Moderne Kunst 24 (June 16, 1910). Brinton, Christian. "Winslow Homer." Scribner's Magazine 49 (January 1911). Burroughs, Bryson. "The Winslow Homer Exhibition." Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art 6, no. 1 (January 1911). Conforti, Michael, et al. The Clark Brothers Collect: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven: distributed by Yale University Press, 2006. Prown, Jules David. Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. "The Art of Winslow Homer." The Nation 92 (March 2, 1911). Gallatin, Albert Eugene. "The Winslow Homer Memorial Exhibition." Art and Progress 2 (April 1911): 1679. Downes, William Howe. The Life and Works of Winslow Homer. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911. Cox, Kenyon. "The Art of Winslow Homer." Scribner's Magazine 56 (September 1914). Cox, Kenyon. Winslow Homer. New York: Privately printed. 1914. McSpadden, Joseph Walker. Famous Painters of America. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co,. 1916. Sherman, Frederick Fairchild. American Painters of Yesterday and Today. New York: Privately printed, 1919. Van Dyck, John C. American Painting and Its Tradition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919. Wehle, Harry B. "Early Paintings by Winslow Homer." Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art 18, no, 2 (February 1923). Pousette-Dart, Nathaniel. Winslow Homer. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1923. Goodrich, Lloyd. "Winslow Homer." The Arts 6 (October 1924). Starkweather, William. "He Painted the Might of the Sea." The Mentor 13 (July 1925). Neuhaus, Eugen. The History and Ideals of American Art. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1931. Bolton, Theodore. "The Art of Winslow Homer: An Estimate in 1932" Fine Arts 18 (February 1932). Johnson, Allen and Dumas Malone, eds. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. Goodrich, Lloyd. Winslow Homer. New York: Published for The Whitney Museum of American Art by Macmillan Co., 1944. Greenberg, Clement. "Winslow Homer's Work." The Nation 159 (October 28, 1944). Beam, Philip C. Winslow Homer: A Biography. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1944. "Homer Success Story." Art News 46 (March 1947). Wildenstein & Co. Loan Exhibition of Winslow Homer: For the Benefit of the New York Botanical Garden. Exhibition catalogue. With an essay by Lloyd Goodrich. New York: Wildenstein & Co., 1947. Comstock, Helen. "The Connoisseur in America." Connoisseur vol. 136. (Dec. 1955). Richardson, E. P. Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years. The Growth of America series. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1956. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Four & Exhibit Seven, Supplement: West Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1959. Goodrich, Lloyd. Winslow Homer. New York: George Braziller, 1959. Gardner, Alfred Ten Eyck. Winslow Homer, American Artist: His World and His Work. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1961. "The Love Affair of Winslow Homer." Bulletin of The New York Public Library 66 (September 1962). Gould, Jean. Winslow Homer: A Portrait. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1962. Steadman, William E. Yankee Painter: A Retrospective Exhibition of Oils, Watercolors, and Graphics by Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. Tucson: University of Arizona Art Gallery, 1963. McCoubrey, John. American Tradition in Painting. New York: George Braziller, 1963. Ingalls, Hunter. "Elements in the Development of Winslow Homer." Art Journal 24 (Fall 1964). Francis, William, ed. Homer and the Sea: A Loan Exhibition of the Marine Paintings of Winslow Homer. Exhibition catalogue. Newport News, VA?: The Mariner's Museum, 1964. Beam, Philip C. Winslow Homer at Prout's Neck. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966. Flexner, James Thomas. The World of Winslow Homer 1936-1910. Time-Life Library of Art. New York: Time-Life Books, 1966. Beam, Philip C. Winslow Homer at Prout's Neck. Exhibition catalogue. Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1966. Ashbery, John. "Williamstown-sur-Seine." Art News 65, no. 10 (February 1967): 4447, 62. Young, Mahonri Sharp. "Infinite Variety." Letter from the U.S.A. Apollo 85, no. 63 (May 1967): 38183. Lynes, Russell. The Art-Makers of Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Carson, Gerald. "Once More on to the Beach." American Heritage 22, no. 5 (August 1971). Knobler, Nathan. The Visual Dialogue. 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971. Lattimore, Anne. "Winslow Homer" American Chronicle 1 (January 1972). Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Wilmerding, John. Winslow Homer. American Art & Artists. New York: Praeger, 1972. Hendricks, Gordon. "The Flood Tide in the Winslow Homer Market." Art News 72 (May 1973). Young, Mahonri Sharp. "The Boat and the Shark." Letter from the U.S.A. Apollo 98 (September 1973) Millard, Charles W. "Winslow Homer." The Hudson Review 26 (Winter 1973-74). Gerdts, William H. The Great American Nude: A History in Art. New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1974. Beam, Philip C. Winslow Homer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. Stein, Roger B. Seascape and the American Imagination. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Clarkson N. Potter; distributed by Crown Publishers, 1975. Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr. American Master Drawings and Watercolors. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Adams, Karen M. Black Images in 19th-Century American Painting and Literature: An Iconological Study of Mount, Melville, Homer and Mark Twain. Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1970. Hendricks, Gordon. The Life and Work of Winslow Homer. New York: Abrams, 1979. Novak, Barbara. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Wilmerding, John. "Winslow Homer's Right and Left." Studies in the History of Art 9 (Spring 1980). Lloyd, Phoebe. Death and American Painting: Charles Willson Peale to Albert Pinkham Ryder. Ph.D. diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 1980. Adams, Henry. "Mortal Themes: Winslow Homer." Art in America 71, no. 2 (February 1983): 11226. Adams, Henry. "Winslow Homer's 'Shall I Tell Your Fortune.'" Birmingham Museum of Art Bulletin. 1983: n.p. Tatham, David. Winslow Homer in the 1880s: Watercolors, Drawings, and Etchings. Exhibition catalogue. Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art, 1983. Beam, Philip C. Winslow Homer Watercolors. Exhibition catalogue. Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1983. Durden-Smith, Jo and Diane Desimone. "Art Town U.S.A." Connoisseur 216 (July 1984). Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Judge, Mary. Winslow Homer. The Q.L.P. Art Series. New York: Crown Publishers, 1986. Prown, Jules D. "Winslow Homer in His Art." Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 30–45. McCaughey, Patrick . "Native and Nomad: Winslow Homer and John S. Sargent." Daedalus 116 (Winter 1987). Knipe, Tony. Winslow Homer: All the Cullercoats Pictures. Exhibition catalogue. Sunderland, England: Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, 1988. Hollander, Anne. Moving Pictures. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Conrads, Margaret C. American Paintings and Sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990. Cikovsky, Nicolai, Jr. Winslow Homer. The Library of American Art. New York: Abrams, 1990. Junker, Patricia and Philip C. Beam, et al. Winslow Homer in the 1890s: Prout's Neck Observed. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990. Bolger, Doreen and Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. "Winslow Homer's Unfinished Business." American Art around 1900: Lectures in Memory of Daniel Fraad. Studies in the History of Art 37 (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990). Nettles, Gail. "Winslow Homer and the Women in His Works" Winslow Homer: An Annual 6 (1991). New Albany, IN: G. Teitelbaum, 1991. McClintock, James. "Painted Waters: When Winslow Homer Discovered the Oceans." Sea Frontiers 38, no. 2 (April 1992) : 40-45. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Schuessler, Raymond. "Winslow Homer, Rembrandt of the Oceans." The Compass: A Magazine of the Sea 59, no. 1 (1989). Pfitzer, Gregory M. "Women at the Water's Edge: The Body Language of Winslow Homer's Seascape Women." American Transcendental Quarterly 8, no. 4 (December 1994): 25786. Gaehtgens, Thomas W., and Heinz Ickstadt, eds. American Icons: Transatlantic Perspectives on 18th- and 19th-Century American Art. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992. Little, Carl. Winslow Homer and the Sea. Rohnert Park, CA: Pomegranate Publications, 1995. Kern, Steven, et al. The Clark: Selections from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996. Burns, Sarah. Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Blanchard, Mary W. Oscar Wilde's America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Little, Carl. Winslow Homer: His Art, His Light, His Landscapes. Cobb, CA: First Glance Books, 1997. Prown, Jules D. "Winslow Homer in His Art." In Reading American Art, edited by Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998: 264-79. Kelly, Franklin. "Robert Sterling Clark as a Collector of Homer" The Magazine Antiques 152, no. 4 (October 1997): 546-549. Gengarelly, W. Anthony. "Another Look at the Sea: Winslow Homer and Stephen Crane." The Mind's Eye (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) Fall 2000: 33-39. Griffin, Randall C. Homer, Eakins, & Anshutz: The Search for American Identity in the Gilded Age. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2004. Johns, Elizabeth. Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation. Berkeley, CA, and London: University of Califorinia Press, Ltd., 2002. Allen, Brian T. "Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute." American Art Review: Special edition, The Western Massachusetts Art Trail XVI, no. 3 (2004): 162-169. Cahill, Timothy. Art in Nature: The Clark Art Institute Today and Tomorrow. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francince Clark Art Institute, 2003. DVD. Updike, John. Still Looking: Essays on American Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Unger, Miles. The Watercolors of Winslow Homer. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Four & Exhibit Seven. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1958. Robertson, Bruce. Reckoning with Winslow Homer: His Late Paintings and Their Influence. Exhibition catalogue. Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1990. Weinberg, H. Barbara, and Carrie Rebora Barratt, eds. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 17651915. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Foster, Kathleen A. Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and The Life Line. Exhibition catalogue. Philadelphia:, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012. Goodrich, Lloyd. Record of Works by Winslow Homer. Edited and expanded by Abigail Booth Gerdts. 5 vols. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2005. Carnegie Institute. Catalogue of the Twelfth Annual Exhibition. Exhibition catalogue. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, 1908. Carnegie Institute. Catalogue of a Summer Loan Exhibition of Paintings. Exhibition catalogue. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, 1908. Society of Art Collectors. Comparative Exhibition of Native and Foreign Art. Exhibition catalogue. New York: J. J. Little & Co., 1904. Chicago Inter-State Industrial Exposition. Catalogue of the Paintings Exhibited by the Inter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago: Fifteenth Annual Exhibition. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1887. Lawrence, James. "Exhibition Review: Winslow Homer. Williamstown." The Burlington Magazine 147, no. 1233 (December 2005): 84850. Polley, Robert L., ed. Great Art Treasures in America's Smaller Museums. Text by Harold E. Haydon. New York: Putnam's, 1967. Melikian, Souren. "A Unique and Unforgettable Collection." International Herald Tribune, 16–17 September 2000.

Adler, Margaret, Homer / Remington, exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Provenance

Edward D. Adams, New York (1889–1924); [M. Knoedler & Co., New York, sold to Clark, 30 Apr. 1924]; Sterling and Francine Clark (1924–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.

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