FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 29, 2007

CONTACT: Katie McElwain / Marketing Coordinator

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Winslow Homer Lecture at the Bennington Museum- “Homer’s Wine-Dark Seas”

"You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors," Winslow Homer once commented. By the time Homer had begun working with watercolor he had already begun to mature as an artist. Yet, his watercolors equaled his larger oil paintings in both technical merit and public regard. It has been said that Homer did more than any other nineteenth-century American artist to establish watercolor as an important medium.

On Thursday, February 8 at 7:00 p.m. Marc Simpson, curator of American Art at the Clark Art Institute, will share his vast knowledge of Winslow Homer in a lecture at the Bennington Museum. Two Homer watercolors, part of the Winslow Homer and Thomas Nast exhibit currently at the Bennington Museum, present a rare opportunity to see works that have been in a private collection for over 50 years. Simpson will speak about Homer’s watercolors of sunsets at sea, and will also discuss Gloucester Harbor (1874), one of the pieces on view at the Bennington Museum. In addition Simpson will discuss the general role of watercolors in Homer’s career.

Marc Simpson’s recent experience with Winslow Homer includes the exhibition “Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History” which he organized for the Clark Art Institute (October 2005 –January 2006), as well as the essay “Homer’s Wine- Dark Seas” in the catalogue for the exhibition “Winslow Homer: Poet of the Sea” shown at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and the Musee d’Art Americain in Giverny in 2006. This essay will serve as the basis for his lecture at the Bennington Museum, which is free to the public.

The Bennington Museum is located at 75 Main St. (Route 9) one mile west of the intersection of Routes 7 and 9 in downtown Bennington, Vermont. Open 10am -5pm daily. Closed Wednesdays. For more information about the museum, visit the website at www.benningtonmuseum.org or call 802-447-1571.