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The Cock Fight
Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910)
1885
- Medium
- Transparent and opaque watercolor, with traces of scraping, over graphite, on thick, moderately textured, cream wove paper (top and lower edges trimmed)
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 26.5 × 48.4 cm (10 7/16 × 19 1/16 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- George F. Harding Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In contrast to the free, confident brushwork of his Nassau images, Homer’s watercolors completed in Cuba (winter 1884-85) are characterized by more neutral color and finicky handling. In The Cock Fight, Homer used the simple backdrop of a plaster wall to offset his careful depiction of two decoratively feathered roosters. Although painted with atypical deliberation, the watercolor is intended to capture the fleeting moment when a battered young rooster has just vanquished an older, fully plumed male. As the fallen bird dies, feathers and dust stirred up by the battle still hover in the humid air.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
