Old Mill (The Morning Bell)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Homer’s talent for creating ambiguity and tension in seemingly sunny narratives is on display here. This is one among many 1870s images by the artist that explore transformational social change in the post-Civil War era—in this case, the expanding role of White working-class women in the wage economy. At its fulcrum is a sunlit figure, lunch pail in hand, ascending a makeshift structure that leads to a mill, as a bell atop the roof sounds to signal the beginning of the workday. She may be new to economic necessity; her finer dress and pronounced separation from the other women in homespun evokes a tension between urban and rural communities in a rapidly industrializing nation.
Artwork Details
- Title: Old Mill (The Morning Bell)
- Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
- Date: 1871
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 24 × 38 1/8 in. (61 × 96.8 cm)
Framed: 34 1/8 × 48 1/4 × 4 3/4 in. (86.7 × 122.6 × 12.1 cm) - Credit Line: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903 (1961.18.26)
- Rights and Reproduction: Yale University Art Gallery
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing