"Here let it be stated that every new member of the Tile Club had to drop his own name and assume another but whether he himself chose it or whether it was thrust upon him, I am not sure. More probably it was thrust upon him. Each member having acquired his sobriquet had to design a seal emblematic of it." (Lucas, p. 52.)

"The Obtuse Bard" is mentioned in Laffan's "Tile Club at Work." (p. 404) Homer first seems to have been identified as "The Obtuse Bard" by Goodrich. (1944, p. 61)

"...Perry also had his anecdotes. Once in some far-away past, he had spent a summer with Winslow Homer. They had occupied a two-room cabin on one of the Long Island ocean beaches. They slept in one room and lived on oysters, and threw the shells into the other room. The shells formed a pyramid and gradually slid off into the corners until, by the end of the summer, they choked the room." from Opinions of Oliver Allston, p. 54.

Homer's friends were also a very literary group. Abbey, Homer, and others of his friends did illustrations for many books. Tilers Smith, Laffan, and Kobbe were writers. Homer Martin although not a writer himself, associated with writers and his wife was a writer. As John C. VanDyke wrote of Homer Martin in American Painting (Scribner's, 1919), "Mrs. Martin says she never heard him `talk shop' and that, with several notable exceptions such as LaFarge and Winslow Homer, most of his close friends were people in other professions than painting." (p. 68).

Harvard librarian and historian, John Fiske, makes frequent reference to Winslow Homer's friends Homer Martin, John LaFarge, William Hennessy, William Laffan and Perry in letters to his wife. Fiske was never a member of the Century Club, but he frequently referred to it (from 1872-1899) and Homer Martin (from 1873-1893). Fiske also used the Century Club post office,

"The Century Club is the safest place in the world for letters and as quick as any to reach me. There is a little post office in the Club, everything is carefully looked after and I go there every day." (2/28/1885, The Letters of John Fiske, edited by his daughter Ethel B. Fisk, Macmillan, New York, 1940).

The Century Club was as much a club of writers as painters (see The Century for a history of the Century Club). Albert Kelsey's wife wrote some novels, under the pen name Patience Warren. Kelsey will be discussed latter.

It would be misleading to suggest that the most interesting part of Homer's personal life was what may have been personal about his art, for that is simply not so. His friends of the Tile Club, the Century Club, and Cambridge where he lived as a youth, provided the most interesting part of his life, and one which was very private. Read The Century 1846-1946 for a fascinating perspective. Even with this note however, I still believe that he regarded the personal side of his art as none of the public's business.

Some of the materials Beam collected were his own and some belonged to the college. Hendricks regarded the collection as a single entity, whereas what exists as the college collection may only be a part of the larger collection. If there were "private" materials passed along, it is likely that these are being held personally by Beam. The college collection is available on microfilm through the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Charles Caffin makes this point in his 1907 book, The Story of American Painting, p. 109.

"Until Millet pricked the pretty bubble of misrepresentation, and taught men to study human life as it really is, these fancy idylls of peasant genre, turned out from Düsseldorf or under its influence, flooded our American market. Anyone who is conversant with the operations of the picture salesrooms knows how large a part they have played in the greater number of collections. Their popular appeal may have done much to interest people in pictures, but it certainly postponed for a considerable time a just appreciation of the true nature of pictorial art."

(see also Hunt Karl Bodmer's America and Thomas People of the First Man)

In 1864, because of his knowledge of Shakespeare, Rowse was chosen to be one of four new members in the Saturday Club (Boston), raising the membership to thirty. Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Henry James Sr. (father of William and Henry James, Jr.), Hawthorne, Whittier, Felton (President of Harvard), Agassiz, Benjamin Peirce (father of Charles Sanders Peirce), and Holmes were already members. (Emerson, p. 388 ff) William Morris Hunt became the 33rd member in 1869. (Emerson, p. viii) Rowse eventually settled in New Jersey and remained a close friend of Eastman Johnson. Rowse is one of the two men pictured in Johnson's painting "Two Men," the other being Mrs. Johnson's brother-in-law Robert W. Rutherford. (Walton, p. 274).

Rowse was in New York in 1858 for he became member of the Century Club that year (The Century, p. 401) and also an Honorary Member (professional) of the National Academy of Design (Clark, p. 269). It would appear that he only visited New York however, for the H.M (p) membership status, was reserved for artists living outside New York City (Clark, p. 245). This seems confirmed by the fact that in 1858 and 1859, he did drawings of Longfellow (Sherman, p. 61).

No truer friends could there be than Damon and Pythias. One sentenced to death, was permitted by the judge to have his friend stand in his place of the other, while he went to take care of his final affairs before being executed. When he returned, the judge was so impressed by the friendship that he let them both go.

"Meantime, the fact remains that practically this question was long ago decided. No good and sufficient reason can be given why, if communism be the best and most natural condition of humanity, the movement of society should have been steadily in the opposite direction. For it is precisely among the most barbarous and ignorant tribes that we find the nearest approximation to a condition of communism; and it is quite probable the primeval man was a communist. But inasmuch as the movement of civilization tends ever to more and more complex relations between man and man, as the infinite possibilities of the division of labor becomes apparent, that essential equality of occupations contemplated by all communistic organizations is incompatible with modern progress." ("Common Sense vs. Communism," The Index, IX, January 17, 1878.)

An attitude of Social Darwinism may be seen in this, but that could be expected for as already mentioned John Fiske associated with some of Homer's other friends (Martin, Laffan, LaFarge, Hennessy, and Perry).

Homer was a reserved man who cherished his privacy -- the Art Interchange of 21 July noted that "The latest bulletin from Winslow Homer [in England] described him as in Parthia," Homer's sly way of telling people back home to leave him alone.

She footnotes her comment with this,

"Studio Notes," Art Interchange 7 (21 July 1881), 19. "Parthia," which was also the name of the ship on which Homer had sailed to England several months earlier, was an ancient kingdom of western Asia, often recalled for its horsemen who baffled the enemy by their rapid maneuvers and discharged their missles backward while in real or pretended flight. By the nineteenth century, a "Parthian shot" had become an elegant last word" and casting back glances of scornful hostility (OED, 1971, 502). (Cooper, note 24, p. 90)

"Charles L. Homer told me that sometime before painting The West Wind, Winslow had been dining with John LaFarge in New York; the two were devoted friends but had many conflicting ideas about art, especially in the field of color. LaFarge criticized Winslow for using too much brown and said his paintings were too dull-toned. Unlike Homer, he was an avowed admirer of European techniques, especially the rich color of the Venetians. Winslow wagered him a hundred dollars that he could paint a picture in browns which would be accepted and admired by critics and the public as well. After Reichard, the dealer who exhibited The West Wind, had reported to Homer the obvious popularity of the work, Winslow wrote to LaFarge: "The West Wind" is brown. It's damned good. Send me your check for $100."

(Note that the difference mentioned here is one regarding the scheme of painting.)

This quote is from Ruskin's first volume. A. J. Finberg, editor of an edition of Ruskin's Modern Painters published by G. Bell & Sons, London in 1928, wrote this editorial note on page 34,

"We are on more dangerous ground when we come to consider what Ruskin meant by facts. These he regards as the single or particular truths which make up the sum total of truth. Those facts or units of truth which refer only to the material side of nature, he believed, can be discriminated, and they are the same for everybody.

"But can insight into the mysteries and beauty of nature be broken up at any point into a number of discriminated units of knowledge which are the same for every artist? Ruskin's answer to this question, in his second volume, is that they can not, and this answer, I believe, is the correct one. But here, in his first volume, he says that they can."