With their crashing waves and roiled skies, the later landscapes of Winslow Homer (1836–1910) remain among the moodiest masterpieces in the history of American art. The painter produced many of his best along the rocky coast of Prouts Neck, Maine, where he kept a studio in the final decades of his life. (“The sun will not rise, or set, without my notice, and thanks,” he once wrote of the spot.) Homer’s picturesque dwelling—a converted carriage house distinguished by rustic clapboard and a mansard roof—opens to the public on September 25, after a $10.5 million restoration by the nearby Portland Museum of Art, which purchased the property in 2006. “Weatherbeaten,” an exhibition of the artist’s locally completed canvases, runs through December 30.
Click here to revisit Homer’s seaside home and studio, as it appeared in AD’s July 1984 issue.