See Maine through Winslow Homer’s eyes
Winslow Homer Exhibition and Prouts Neck Studio Tours Offer Rare Maine Art Experience This Summer
PORTLAND, Maine — The Portland Museum of Art is opening a major new show this week that spotlights a lesser‑known facet of America’s most celebrated 19th‑century painter: his work as an etcher. Starting Friday, July 3, the museum will present “Winslow Homer: Painter, Etcher,” a sweeping display of Homer’s rare prints paired with the paintings and watercolors that inspired them. The exhibition runs through Oct 18 and marks the first time a museum has devoted an entire show exclusively to Homer’s etching practice.
Curators have assembled more than 40 etchings—many on loan from collections across the country—alongside related works that reveal how Homer used printmaking to revisit and refine subjects he first captured in oil and watercolor. Among the highlights is “The Life Line,” a dramatic 1884 oil on canvas borrowed from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The same scene appears in a later etching also on view, allowing visitors to trace the evolution from brushstroke to burin.
“The etchings give us a fresh window into Homer’s process,” said Ramey Mize, former associate curator of American art at the PMA and curator of the exhibition. “Putting these etchings in dialogue with related paintings, drawings, and proofs will center Homer’s Maine studio as a critical site where these prints were conceived, connecting audiences to the physical and creative context of the artist’s work.”
The exhibition also underscores the central role Maine played in shaping Homer’s later career. In the early 1880s, Homer moved into a converted carriage house on his family’s estate at Prouts Neck, a windswept peninsula jutting into the Atlantic. The stone‑strewn shoreline, rolling fog, and relentless surf became the backdrop for many of his most iconic canvases, and the same vistas inspired the designs for his prints. Working with New York printer George Wistar Hodge Ritchie, Homer created the plates in his Maine studio before sending them south for printing—a collaboration that gave his etchings a distinctly coastal flavor.
Those who want to step inside Homer’s creative world can do so through the museum’s guided studio tours, which opened to the public for the first time in 2012. The Prouts Neck studio is a National Historic Landmark and part of the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios program administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Tours run Thursday through Sunday, May through mid‑November, and must be reserved in advance. Ticket holders begin with a brief viewing of “Weatherbeaten,” an 1894 oil of the Prouts Neck coastline painted from the studio’s vantage point, before boarding a shuttle that ferries them the short distance to the site.
Inside the studio, original artifacts bring Homer’s daily life into focus: paint tubes still bearing his fingerprints, period furniture, and a hand‑painted sign that reads “Snakes! Snakes! Mice!”—a tongue‑in‑cheek warning Homer posted to discourage unwanted visitors. A faint etched signature remains on a window pane, a quiet testament to the artist’s presence.
For Maine residents, the dual experience offers a rare opportunity to engage with world‑class art without leaving the state. “Many of the etchings were conceived right here, looking out at the same ocean Homer watched,” Mize noted. “Standing in his studio, you can feel the same light and hear the same wind that shaped his vision.”
The museum has also arranged special admission incentives: visitors under 21 receive free entry, and all guests can tour the galleries free of charge every Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. With summer travel season in full swing, the PMA hopes the combination of a high‑profile exhibition and an intimate historic studio will draw both locals and out‑of‑state visitors to Maine’s cultural heart.
