High Cliff, Coast of Maine
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) · 1894
Not currently on display. Second-floor galleries for eighteenth to early twentieth century art closed on 22 September 2025 for reinstallation and are scheduled to reopen on 6 November 2026; the museum's collection page listed this work as not on view during the closure. Confirm the gallery placement after reopening.
A wave has just exploded against a wall of dark rock, and the spray is still in the air. That is the whole subject: brown ledges streaked with red, a churning slab of green and white sea, and a slice of grey sky. Only after a moment do you notice three tiny figures on the top of the cliff at the upper right, watching the surf. They give the scale, and the scale is frightening. Homer painted this on the rocks of Prouts Neck, the headland in Maine where he lived alone in a studio facing the Atlantic for the last twenty-seven years of his life.
Look at the paint itself. The rock is laid on in heavy, scraped and dragged strokes that follow the fractures of the granite, and the foam is built up in thick white paint so that it stands up from the canvas. Homer has tilted the composition so that you look down into the trough of the wave rather than out to a horizon, which is why the picture feels so unstable. He worked outdoors in the worst weather, sometimes painting from a portable hut on the rocks, and he was after the exact moment of impact rather than a pretty seascape. The colours are severe, almost monochrome, and yet the picture is full of movement.
Homer had trouble selling this painting. He complained that it stood unsold in his dealer's rooms for years, and it was finally bought by the New York collector William T. Evans, who gave it to the Smithsonian in 1909 as part of the founding gift of American paintings that made this museum. Homer died the following year. The late seascapes are now considered the summit of his art, a stripped-down confrontation between a person and the sea, and this is one of the best of them.
Did You Know? Homer grumbled that no one wanted this painting; it took years to sell and is now one of his most admired seascapes.
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