1889
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Leaping Trout is a 1889 by Winslow Homer, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A trout arcs out of dark water, scales flashing in sunlight. The fish is chasing an insect—or maybe a fishing fly—just out of view. Most artists would paint this from the fisherman’s side. Homer flips it. We’re underwater, looking up at the trout’s belly. The water feels alive, almost like you could reach out and touch it. If you like this, look up Winslow Homer’s other watercolors next.
In 1886, Winslow Homer began to produce oil paintings and watercolors of subjects in the Adirondack Mountains, where he and his brother Charles had fished and hunted since the 1870s. In Leaping Trout , a silvery trout propels itself from the water in pursuit of a hapless insect or a fisherman’s fly. Homer’s choice to adopt the fish’s perspective, rather than a fisherman’s, is quite unconventional and heightens the drama and immediacy of the scene. His technique, influenced by the free brushwork of French Impressionism, similarly animates his still-life subject. Luminous washes of transparent…
Noted for his technical variety in watercolors, Homer used a technique called scraping—removing softened paint and paper fibers by taking a blunt or sharp object to the paper’s wet surface—to produce the pond’s two glistening white highlights.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects.
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
