At the turn of the twentieth century, Florida – the United States’ foothold in the Tropics – was under construction, both physically and in the national imagination. While Florida’s sunny, palmate beaches beckoned Northeastern consumptives and neurasthenics, the state’s alligator-rich wilds offered adventure seekers a taste of primordial nature. Bolstered by an expanding system of newly-built railways and luxury resort hotels, Florida was simultaneously styled as the gateway to the Tropics and the American Mediterranean during the Gilded Age. Foregrounding Florida’s development through tourism, this paper reexamines the art of Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). Both artists painted in Florida between 1885 and 1917. Visiting Florida nine times between 1885 and 1905, Homer produced a remarkable body of watercolors that continued the enduring themes of angling and the Darwinian struggle of man in nature. Homer’s work in Florida also constitutes a formal departure from his northeastern work and subjects. Sargent, who visited once in 1917, generated a series of equally notable oil portraits and watercolors in Florida. Analyzing each artist’s Floridian oeuvre, this paper draws attention to previously unexplored links between two seemingly antithetical artists. As both the leading American artists of the period, Homer and Sargent’s trips to Florida document the states transformation at a key moment in the state’s history. This paper’s title is drawn from a description of the Florida swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of a constellation of northern writers and artists who acted as boosters and tourists to the state during the Gilded Age. Engaging travel accounts, tourist literature, literary descriptions and visual art, this paper forges a compelling link between consonant perspectives of two otherwise opposed American artists.
About the presenterTheodore Ward Barrow
Art historian studying at the Graduate Center, CUNY.