A major figure in the history of American art, Winslow Homer is best known for oil paintings and watercolors depicting natural scenes, seascapes and daily life. But this was only the second half of his career; the first half was spent as America’s best known and most popular magazine illustrator. Between 1857 and 1875, he produced over 200 engravings. Half of these were published in Harper’s Weekly, the widest read periodical of the time. Unlike the vast array of media options at our disposal today, people in the mid-nineteenth century were dependent on printed publications to keep abreast of current events. As Philip C. Beam writes in Winslow Homer’s Magazine Engravings, “The ability to know what was going on in the world as it happened became both a mania and a right of democratic government.” (pg. 7) He describes the great demand for “visual accounting” that made Homer’s role documenting lives and experiences so valuable. He did this with the same distinctive style and loyalty to his subject matter now celebrated in his paintings. Homer’s career as an engraver may be divided into three chronological sections: the years preceding the Civil War, the Civil War itself and the post-war period. The work of the late 1850s may be characterized by the innocence of a carefree young man living in the city or traveling to the nearby countryside. In 1861, a sobriety enters Homer’s images as the specter of war looms closer. Titles like The Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the U.S. at the Capitol stand in stark contrast to the leisure of August in the Country - The Seashore. During the war, Homer took on the role of “artist-correspondent”—a kind of reporter stationed at times on the battlefield and at times on the domestic front, portraying the effects of war from all perspectives. Because photography was still in its early stages and was often too slow and too cumbersome for use in war coverage, artists became the primary resource for visual news. It was after the war that Homer was the most prolific. Sent to Paris to cover the World’s Fair in 1866, he was able to see the realist paintings of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet as well as some early examples of Impressionism. Traveling in Europe, he was also exposed to the English tradition of illustration and caricature (William Hogarth) and to Japanese printmaking at the Louvre Museum. Previously, Homer based his designs on observation of American life and culture, mostly between the cities of Boston and New York. With this new flood of influences, his style of engraving evolved significantly. It is a medium that demands strong linear technique, which Homer possessed and continued to develop. What distinguished him later was his ability to achieve sophisticated tonal qualities as well. Throughout his career, he also exhibited great skill in the balance of compositions: whether representing social groups (his skaters being most notable for their grace and movement), oceans and cliffs (The Wreck of the Atlantic, 1873) or instances of contact between people and the elements (March Winds and April Showers, 1859). Homer was always known for his great ability to represent things exactly as he saw them (influenced by the teachings of fellow American realist Thomas Eakins) because this was the primary value in art appreciation in his lifetime. Art historians have subsequently come to recognize the consistent formal qualities of his work which set him apart from his many contemporaries. Of the numerous magazine engravers working alongside him, his is the only name that we know today. The set of skills he gained as an engraver (keen observation, commitment to the integrity of his subjects, and a strong sense of composition and balance) formed a solid basis for his transition to painting. Homer was elected to the National Academy in 1864, an honor which surely anticipated his shift from popular illustration to fine art. Settling in Prout’s Neck, Maine in 1883, he would devote himself wholly to painting the sea and would do no more engravings, yet the vast production occurring before this time amounts to a career unto itself.