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Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

from A Weekend with Winslow Homer by Ann Keay Beneduce

I enjoy drawing young people like you. They are the subjects of

some of my best-known paintings and drawings. Perhaps it’s because I

had a happy childhood myself. I was born in Boston, but when I was six

years old, our family–Mother, Father, and I, with my two brothers,
Charles and Arthur–moved to Cambridge, a nearby suburb. Cambridge

is like a city in itself now, but at that time it was really rural, with

woods and fields for us to play in, the river for fishing and boating.
What good times we had! Charlie and Arthur and I were not only

Painter brothers but also best friends, and, in fact, we’ve been that way ever

since. We’re a very close family. My father’s a businessman and he’s had
Birth: February 24, some financial ups and downs, but I would say we were fairly

1836 comfortable off. Both my brothers also went into business, but that

Boston, didn’t appeal to me at all. I never wanted to be anything but an artist. I
Massachusetts loved to draw, and my mother, who was very good at watercolors

herself, encouraged me. I drew pictures of everything and everyone–of

Death: September 29, my brothers, of friends, of trees and farmhouses, dogs and cows–I was

1910 always drawing.
Prouts Neck, Maine Then one morning at breakfast, my father noticed an ad in the

newspaper. He read it out loud: “Boy wanted, apply to Bufford…. Must

Style: Realism have a taste for drawing. No other wanted.” J. H. Bufford was the

owner of a printing business in Boston, and the position he offered
sounded like a splendid opportunity for me, so I answered the ad. At first Mr. Bufford gave me

some free-lance work to do–illustration sheet-music covers for popular songs. The first two of these,

“O Whistle and I’ll Come to You” and “Katy Darling,” came out in 1854, when I was just eighteen

years old. Can you imagine how proud my family was to have these sitting the music rack of our

piano?!

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