Breezing Up Winslow Homer Essays - Breezing Up, Winslow Homer, Sea

Breezing Up Winslow Homer The 1873 masterpiece Breezing Up, by Winslow Homer located in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC is an oil on canvas painting that measures 23 3/13 X 38 1/6 in.. The primary subject of this painting is a man with three boys in a small wooden sail boat that is moving along with what appears to be a fairly choppy sea. At the center of this painting is the stern of the sail boat. The oldest of the boys is sitting on the high end of the stern with his knees up and his bare feet planted flat on the deck in order to keep him from slipping down into the water. This image forms a powerful triangle in the center of the painting. The boy?s use of only one hand on the tiller line combined with his relaxed posture suggest that he is very much at ease with his responsibility of steering the boat. His face is only visible in a semi-profile view which exposes his chin, left cheek, and eye socket. These features are well defined against thick layers of puffy clouds which are lingering over the water. Like the others in the boat he is facing away from the setting sun which causes the light to reflect off the back of his long sleeved shirt and hat. Just to the boy?s right is the man in the boat who is presumably the father of the boys. His seated position below the deck allows the viewer only to see his face shoulders, arms, and hands. His red long sleeved shirt is the brightest color in the painting, and his calloused hands show strength as he holds the halyard firm in the cleat with a fully extended arm. Of the four people in the boat he is the only one with a troubled look on his face. According to David Prown this is a very common characteristic in Homer?s work. He says: Although the adults of Homer?s world seem isolated, his children frolic together in a cheerful world of laughter and mutuality. For Homer, growing up seems to imply a loss, a fall from paradise, removal from happy, carefree innocence and high spirits to a serious, lonely existence in which each man is an island unto himself. (Prown 86) This is the perfect description of the expressions of the people in this painting. The children are clearly relaxed and content, but the father has an expression that suggests that he has something weighing heavy on his mind, and that he is receiving only temporary relief as he relaxes on the water with his sons. The other two boys are relaxing up towards the bow of the boat. The older of the two is stretched out across the deck covering the width of the bow with his leather shoes hovering inches over the water. The youngest of the boys is sitting up right on the deck with his feet resting inside the boat and he has a pleasant look of deep thought on his face. Clearly all of these boys are relaxed and content with their surroundings. Numerous fish inside of the boat suggest that this group has had an afternoon of fishing and recreation. They are not dressed for serious fishing, so there is a good chance they are out there strictly for leisure. A building off the bow on the distant shore is barely visible, and combined with the long shadows of the setting sun, it seems that they are heading home. Homers soft blue sky and puffy white clouds take up 2/3 of the canvas, leaving only the bottom third for the water and the horizon. The sky is completely empty except for a lone gull who?s wings are lit up by the sun as is hovers directly in line with what appears to be a tiny illuminated sail of another boat on the very distant horizon. Homer also has an uncommon ability to recreate curves just as they would appear in nature. He uses this ability to capture the shape and form of the rolling waves in the sea, by even more than that he uses it to capture the human experience. The use of the sunlight as it reflects off the cloths of the people in the boat adds to the realistic nature of this painting. The wrinkles of white cotton shirts of the boy?s are accented brilliantly as the sun illuminates and caused shadows on different parts of their arms. The four people in this painting express more with their body language that they do with their facial expressions. Particularly the curve of their backs is evidence of their state of relaxation. In the children there is no evidence of tension in their bodies.

John Haigh essays

John Haigh essays Murder is usually a very gruesome subject. However, it is also a very interesting subject, especially in the case of John Haigh who managed to evade the criminal justice system for many years on end. Although he was a murderer he was also one of the greatest criminal masterminds of all time. Haigh entered this world on the twenty fourth of July 1909. He was born into a religious family and grew up a content child. Everyone who knew him said he would grow up to be a perfect gentleman. However, as Haigh began to grow up he joined a gang of youths and appeared in court on several occasions. Finally, in 1934 he was sent to prison for theft. Being a man of optimism, Haigh viewed prison as a temporary setback, and vowed to gain knowledge during his time there that would be useful to him when his sentence ended. To fulfil his vow, he read many books and in one book came across a particular passage that intrigued him. The Passage was entitled Corpus Delicti and Haigh convinced himself, after reading the passage several times that murder could not be proved without a body. During the long months he spent in prison, he became positively obsessed with murder. Whilst in prison, he worked in the tin factory and obtained sulphuric acid from his workstation. He did this to test his theory on destroying an animal bone structure. Haigh believed that if he could entirely dissolve an animal bone structure there would be no body and therefore he could not be found guilty of murder. His unfortunate volunteers were the mice he caught in his cell. Sadly for five unsuspecting people he found his theory to be correct. When Haigh was released from prison, he had not lost his appetite for murder, quite the contrary. He immediately began demonstrating psychopathic behaviour. He came upon his fist victim by pure luck. He was William McSwan, a childhood friend of Haighs who had the misfortune of meeting Haigh in a ...