Artwork
The Red School House
The Red School House is an oil painting by the American Impressionist artist Winslow Homer. It dates from 1873 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
- Inscription
- Inscribed:lower right: HOMER / 1873; upper right, scratched into paint and then overpainted: Homer 1873
About this work
Technique & Style
The Red School House is an oil painting executed on canvas, a medium and support consistent with Winslow Homer's standard practice for this period.
The Red School House is an oil painting executed on canvas, a medium and support consistent with Winslow Homer's standard practice for this period. The work measures 55.5 by 39.5 centimeters, a relatively modest scale suited to its intimate rural subject. Created in 1873, the painting reflects Homer's mid-1870s engagement with American country life, rendered through the handling of oil paint on canvas to capture the distinctive red-painted schoolhouse and its surroundings.
The National Gallery of Art, which holds the work as part of its collection, classifies it simply as a painting.
No source addresses specific condition notes, surface handling details, or stylistic analysis beyond the basic medium and dimensions, so further claims about palette, brushwork, or current condition are not made.
History & Provenance
The Red School House was created by Winslow Homer in 1873 as an oil on canvas. According to provenance recorded by Lloyd Goodrich and supplied by Abigail Booth Gerdts in 1991, Nellie C. M. Taylor stated in 1919 that her father had acquired the painting directly from Homer. The documented ownership chain begins with E. & A. Milch, Inc. in New York selling the work in 1919 to Gilbert E. Rubens of New York.
The Milch gallery again handled the sale on 22 November 1935, this time to Thomas Edward Hanley of Bradford, Pennsylvania. Hanley died on 9 April 1969, and the painting passed by inheritance to his wife, Tullah Innes Hanley, who exhibited it at Canisius College in Buffalo later that year. E. V. Thaw & Co. in New York sold it on 14 August 1970 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia, who gifted it in 1985 to the National Gallery of Art.
The work is held by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., accessioned in 1985 as a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.
It was exhibited in 1968 at the Denver Art Museum in _Selections from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. T. Edward Hanley_ (22 February–30 April). Mrs. Hanley also included it in _Works from the Hanley Collection_ at Canisius College, Buffalo (23 November–23 December 1969).
Overview
Winslow Homer’s 1873 oil on canvas, titled The Red School House, portrays a solitary young woman positioned before a vivid red school building. The composition is set against a soft pink sky and a modest cluster of trees, delivering a calm, rural tableau that reflects the artist’s interest in everyday American life.
Subject & Meaning
The figure wears a white dress accented with red stripes and a black lace collar, complemented by a white hat tied with a black ribbon, and holds a book in her right hand. This attire, together with the modest schoolhouse, suggests a scene of education in a countryside setting, emphasizing themes of learning and quiet domesticity.
Own this work as a print
Artist & collection
Artist
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects.
- Portrait of the Artist's Sister Ellen Edelfelt
Taiteilijan sisaren Ellen Edelfeltin muotokuva
Portrait of a Woman in Gray
Two Sisters in the Garden
Ung pige i en have
Ida Ilsted, later the Artist's Wife
Ung pige i en have
A young Woman
Portrait of artist’s sister
Between two lights
View from the Loft of the Grain Store at the Bakery in the Citadel of Copenhagen
A Woman from Bern, Switzerland