Artist: Winslow Homer

Year: 1873–1876

Medium: Oil on canvas

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) is an oil painting by American artist Winslow Homer. It depicts a catboat called the Gloucester chopping through that city’s harbor under “a fair wind” (Homer’s original title). Inside the boat are a man, three boys, and their catch.
Homer began the canvas in New York in 1873, after he had visited Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he first worked in watercolor. He used the sketches made there, of which the most closely related is Sailing the Catboat (1873), for the oil painting, which he worked on over three years. Infrared reflectography has revealed the many changes he made to the composition during this time, including the removal of a fourth boy near the mast and a second schooner in the distance. At one point the adult held both the sheet and the tiller, a position initially adapted from an oil study of 1874 titled The Flirt. The painting’s message is positive; despite the choppy waves, the boaters look relaxed. The anchor that replaced the boy in the bow was understood to symbolize hope. The boy holding the tiller looks forward to the horizon, a statement of optimism about his future and that of the young United States.

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