Detail of Shooting the Rapids by Winslow Homer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River
1905–10


Object Details

Title: Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River

Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)

Date: 1905–10

Culture: American

Medium: Oil on canvas with chalk

Dimensions: 30 x 48 1/4 in. (76.2 x 122.6 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Charles S. Homer, 1911

Accession Number: 11.57


Homer often enjoyed fishing trips in the wilderness of Quebec with his brother Charles. He based this unfinished painting on watercolors created during their last visit to Canada in 1902. Family tradition suggests that it records a perilous canoe journey down the Saguenay River and that Charles is the frightened passenger holding on to the gunwales. Homer only sketchily blocked in details such as the paddles, the foam above a concealed rock in the riverbed, and the guide’s facial features, marking his intended revisions in chalk. The artist’s family believed that he considered the painting complete in its essentials, and donated it to the Museum after his death.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11137