An exploration of the nineteenth-century artist's avid pursuit of fly-fishing describes his efforts in the Adirondacks in northern New York, Florida, and Quebec, offering insight into what fly-fishing meant to Homer personally as well as the sport's role in the development of his color, form, and creative energy. Reprint.

Published to coincide with an exhibition of the nineteenth-century artist's fly-fishing paintings, an examination of the author's inspirations and works notes his use of watercolors and his insight into the sport that enabled him to convey its realities through his creations.

As counterpoint to all his other work, especially in the 1880s, they serve to underscore Homer's passion for and dedication to fly-fishing. Examines Homer's lifelong devotion to fishing as it related to his connection to the American landscape, and his extraordinary ability to evoke the atmosphere of pastoral locales. Over 180 color and b/w figures, plates and photographs.

‘Every time I leave the world of work, family and community to wade into a river with fly rod in hand, I enter a sacred space that sometimes finds expression in the written word.’ In Casting into Mystery, writer Robert Reid and wood engraver Wesley W. Bates—avid anglers, both—put ink to paper in homage to the venerable sport of fly fishing. Through text and image, they recall with fondness the ‘company of rivers’ each is grateful to know, providing a glimpse inside a sporting culture teeming with literature, art and music. Part memoir, part objet d’art and part field guide, Casting into Mystery will delight passionate fly fishing practitioners and armchair anglers alike.

American painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910) created some of the most breathtaking and influential watercolors in the history of the medium. This handsome volume provides a comprehensive look at Homer’s technical and artistic practice as a watercolorist, and at the experiences that shaped his remarkable development. Focusing on 25 rarely seen watercolors from the Art Institute’s collection, along with 75 other related watercolors, gouaches, drawings, and paintings––including many of the artist’s characteristic subjects––the book proposes a new understanding of Homer’s techniques as they evolved over his career. Accessibly written essays consider each of the featured works in detail, examining the relationship between monochrome drawing and watercolor and the artist’s lifelong interest in new optical and color theories. In particular, they show how his sojourn in England—where he encountered leading British marine watercolorists and the dynamic avant-garde art scene—precipitated an abrupt change in technique and subject matter upon his return home. Conservators address the fragility of these watercolors, which are prone to fading due to light exposure, and demonstrate, through pioneering research on Homer’s pigments and computer-assisted imaging, how the works have changed over time. Several of Homer’s greatest watercolors are digitally “restored,” providing an exhilarating glimpse of the original impact of Homer’s groundbreaking color experiments.

For more than forty years, George McLean has lived in a stone farmhouse on 100 acres of land in Grey County, Ontario. On his daily walks, he looks for a moment that will inspire him -- the first step in a process that can take up to a year to yield a single painting. McLean's densely layered depictions of the natural world emerge directly from his intense interest in wildlife. In this sumptuous book, Virginia Eichhorn, Adam Duncan Harris, and Tom Smart examine the development of McLean's art and trace his varied influences, from early 20th-century wildlife artists Carl Rungius and Bruno Liljefors to Andrew Wyeth. Connecting with past traditions while resonating with contemporary audiences, McLean's work, along with that of many realists before him, reflects a shared sense of what it means to be North American. Illustrated with more than 60 colour reproductions, the publication of George McLean: The Living Landscape coincides with the opening of an accompanying international touring exhibition of McLean's work at the Tom Thomson Gallery in Owen Sound.

"Through the oils of [West Fraser's] mature style ... he has achieved a level of spontaneity in the plein air tradition that captures the essence of the lowcountry." So concludes the essay by Angela D. Mack that leads everyone from connoisseurs to those who simply enjoy the artistic images of the South Carolina lowcountry into a visual feast to stir the senses. The first book of its kind dedicated to the work of this plein air impressionist, Charleston in My Time: The Paintings of West Fraser celebrates the passion and independence West Fraser exhibits in his work, his amazing eye for natural light and landscapes, and his love of Charleston and the lowcountry.

In this title, David Tatham demonstrates that Winslow Homer's 'Adirondack oils and watercolours constitute a highly original examination of the human race's relationship to the natural world at a time when long-established assumptions about humans, nature, and art itself were undergoing profound change.

A revelatory exploration of Winslow Homer’s engagement with photography, shedding new light on his celebrated paintings and works on paper One of the greatest American painters of the 19th century, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) also maintained a deep engagement with photography throughout his career. Focusing on the important, yet often-overlooked, role that photography played in Homer’s art, this volume exposes Homer’s own experiments with the camera (he first bought one in 1882). It also explores how the medium of photography and the larger visual economy influenced his work as a painter, watercolorist, and printmaker at a moment when new print technologies inundated the public with images. Frank Goodyear and Dana Byrd demonstrate that photography offered Homer new ways of seeing and representing the world, from his early commercial engravings sourced from contemporary photographs to the complex relationship between his late-career paintings of life in the Bahamas, Florida, and Cuba and the emergent trend of tourist photography. The authors argue that Homer’s understanding of the camera’s ability to create an image that is simultaneously accurate and capable of deception was vitally important to his artistic practice in all media. Richly illustrated and full of exciting new discoveries, Winslow Homer and the Camera is a long-overdue examination of the ways in which photography shaped the vision of one of America’s most original painters.