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Object Timeline
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1917 |
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2025 |
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Painting, The Watermelon Boys
This is a Painting. It was created by Winslow Homer. It is dated 1876 and we acquired it in 1917. Its medium is brush and oil paint on canvas . It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.
This arresting work belongs to Homer’s mid-1870s series of African American life painted in Virginia. It also resonates with the artist’s popular images of rural childhood. Most of those works focus on White figures; this composition is distinguished by a grouping of Black and White boys together. The individualized, alert youth at center subverts period conventions of Blacks as marginal and humorous. While nineteenth-century critics understood the work in such terms—shaped by the virulent stereotype of African Americans and watermelons—the painting is complicated by the children’s easy fellowship. In this way, Homer offers an ambiguous commentary on the future of race relations in post-Civil War society.
This object was
donated by
Charles Savage Homer, Jr..
It is credited Gift of Charles Savage Homer, Jr..
Its dimensions are
61.3 × 96.8 cm (24 1/8 × 38 1/8 in.)
It is signed
Signed and dated in brush and oil paint, lower left: HOMER 1876
Cite this object as
Painting, The Watermelon Boys; Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910); USA; brush and oil paint on canvas ; 61.3 × 96.8 cm (24 1/8 × 38 1/8 in.); Gift of Charles Savage Homer, Jr.; 1917-14-6
