Sharpshooter
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.As a freelance illustrator, Homer traveled to the front lines in Virginia three times, documenting battlefields and the everyday lives of soldiers. Sharpshooter, his first significant work in oil, conveys the war’s devastation in symbolic ways. Homer suggests the imminence of death as a Union solider perched in a tree takes aim at his unseen target through a telescopic viewfinder. This modern technology allowed a sniper to strike an unsuspecting victim from up to a half-mile away. Homer later explained in a letter accompanied by a chilling sketch: "I looked through one of their rifles once . . . [the] impression struck me as being as near murder as anything I ever could think of in connection with the army & I always had a horror of that branch of the service."
Artwork Details
- Title: Sharpshooter
- Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
- Date: 1863
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: Framed: 12 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches (31.1 x 41.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Portland Museum of Art, Maine, Gift of Barbro and Bernard Osher (1992.41)
- Rights and Reproduction: Image courtesy of Meyersphoto.com
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing