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The Life Line
The Life Line
Public domain: Image courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum.

The Life Line

Artist (American, 1836–1910)
Date1884
Mediumetching in dark green ink
Dimensionsplate: 12 15/16 x 17 13/16 in. (32.8 x 45.3 cm)
sheet: 17 13/16 x 23 in. (45.3 x 58.4 cm)
ClassificationsPrints
Markingsl.r.: remarque of an anchor between two dials
Credit LineMrs. Kingsmill Marrs Collection
Object number1926.761
Label TextBy summer of 1883, Homer had formed his idea for The Life Line, perhaps his most celebrated canvas of the 1880s. Based on the dramatic sea rescues that he witnessed in Cullercoats, along with a similar scene that he observed in New Jersey, the artist completed the painting at his New York studio before relocating permanently to Scarborough, Maine. The rescued woman in the painting suggests a revision of The Gale’s central figure, here surrounded by a violent, roiling sea, composed of slashing diagonals that heighten the sense of peril. Homer would revisit this enormously popular composition in etchings from 1884 and 1889.
On View
Not on view