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Camp Fire

Winslow Homer American
1880
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 766
Homer first visited the Adirondacks, in upstate New York, in September 1870 and returned to the mountains frequently during the succeeding decades to hunt, fish, and gather ideas for paintings. This canvas originated in an 1880 trip to Keene Valley. Two fishermen, identified by their tackle basket and long-handled net, are lost in their thoughts or dozing by the campfire. They have constructed their shelter under a partly uprooted cedar, which provides both a symbol of ravaged nature and a striking compositional element. An artist friend of Homer’s remarked that “a woodsman could tell what kind of logs were burning by the sparks that rose in long curved lines.”

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Camp Fire
  • Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
  • Date: 1880
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 23 3/4 x 38 1/8 in. (60.3 x 96.8 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of Josephine Pomeroy Hendrick, in the name of Henry Keney Pomeroy, 1927
  • Object Number: 27.181
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

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Annie Lawrie (Sheet music cover), Winslow Homer American, Lithograph
Annie Lawrie (Sheet music cover)
Multiple artists/makers
1850–59
Sunday Morning in Virginia – From the Painting by Winslow Homer in the National Academy of Design (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. XXIV), Winslow Homer American, Wood engraving
Sunday Morning in Virginia – From the Painting by Winslow Homer in the National Academy of Design (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. XXIV)
Winslow Homer
May 22, 1880
A Quiet Day in the Country (from "Appleton's Journal," Vol. III), Winslow Homer American, Wood engraving
A Quiet Day in the Country (from "Appleton's Journal," Vol. III)
Winslow Homer
D. Appleton & Co.
June 6, 1870
George Blake's Letter (The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. IX), Winslow Homer American, Wood engraving
George Blake's Letter (The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. IX)
Winslow Homer
January 1870
"I Cannot! It Would Be a Sin! A Fearful Sin!" (The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. VI), Winslow Homer American, Wood engraving
"I Cannot! It Would Be a Sin! A Fearful Sin!" (The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. VI)
Winslow Homer
September 1868

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