The Winslow Homer Studio is the historic studio and home of the artist Winslow Homer, which is located on what is now Winslow Homer Road on Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Maine. Maine architect John Calvin Stevens altered and expanded an existing carriage house to suit Homer's needs in 1884, even moving the building 100 feet for added privacy from his brother's neighboring summer home. The most dramatic element is a balcony the width of the building, from which the artist often painted in winter. The building is 44 by 53 feet (13 m × 16 m) and two stories high, for a total of 2,200 square feet (200 m2). Homer lived and painted in the studio from 1884 until his death there in 1910.
The studio was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The Portland Museum of Art acquired the building and surrounding grounds on January 31, 2006, closing both to the public during restoration projects. It was opened to the public in 2012, but may only be visited on a guided tour. The Portland Museum of Art undertook significant restoration of the building. Changes and additions made by members of the Homer family in 1938-39 were undone in order to preserve the studio as Winslow Homer left it in 1910. Some updates were also made to the property to enable it to function as a museum exhibit. The additions included plumbing and a restroom for visitors, electricity, security, and hidden steel reinforcements for the balcony (or piazza).
Famous quotes containing the words homer and/or studio:
“But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The studio has become the crucible where human genius at the apogee of its development brings back to question not only that which is, but creates anew a fantastic and conventional nature which our weak minds, impotent to harmonize it with existing things, adopt by preference, because the miserable work is our own.”
—Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)