The Red School House1873
A young woman, perhaps the schoolteacher, stands holding her books in a striped white dress and ruffled hat, her head turned away, while behind her the red schoolhouse glows under a pale sunset sky and a few small figures gather at the door. More about this work
About this work
A young woman, perhaps the schoolteacher, stands holding her books in a striped white dress and ruffled hat, her head turned away, while behind her the red schoolhouse glows under a pale sunset sky and a few small figures gather at the door. Winslow Homer painted a series of country school scenes in the early 1870s, celebrating the one-room schoolhouse as a symbol of American rural life after the Civil War and the young women who often taught in them. The large, confident figure set against the simple landscape gives her a quiet independence.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman stands close to us with a red schoolhouse in the distance under a sunset sky in this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces us, but she turns her head to look off to the left with light brown eyes. She has a short, straight nose, full pink lips, and a round face. Her blond hair is pulled up under a round white hat layered with ruffles, which lies like a pancake over the top of her head. Her white dress is vertically striped with thin rust-red lines and has a long-sleeved, tight-fitting bodice and a long skirt. A dark gray belt is cinched around her narrow waist, and she wears a black, lacy ruffle around her neck. The woman’s arms hang by her sides, and she holds two paperback-sized books in her left hand, to our right. An earth-brown lawn stretches back to the schoolhouse, which has crimson-red walls, a chimney, and a dark gray roof. Three forms painted with a few streaks of dark or light gray or topaz blue suggest people standing near the door of the schoolhouse. Trees and a grassy lawn beyond the building are loosely painted with blended strokes. The sky is shaded pale lemon yellow and light peach with touches of rose pink. The artist signed and dated the lower right corner, “HOMER 1873.”
Description from the National Gallery of Art.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Winslow Homer
American, 1836–1910 · Born in Boston, Massachusetts; died in Prouts Neck, Maine.
Homer began as an illustrator, covering the Civil War for Harper’s Weekly, and first made his name in painting with scenes of soldiers and country life. A stay at the fishing village of Cullercoats on the English coast in 1881–82 turned him towards the sea, and from 1883 he lived at Prouts Neck, Maine, painting the Atlantic in all weathers. He was also a fluent watercolourist in the Adirondacks, Canada and the Caribbean, and The Gulf Stream draws on those southern journeys.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The National Gallery of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1985.64.21
- Credit
- Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Type
- Painting
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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