Camp Fire

Winslow Homer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Homer first visited the Adirondacks, in upstate New York, in September 1870 and returned to the mountains frequently during the succeeding decades to hunt, fish, and gather ideas for paintings. This canvas originated in an 1880 trip to Keene Valley. Two fishermen, identified by their tackle basket and long-handled net, are lost in their thoughts or dozing by the campfire. They have constructed their shelter under a partly uprooted cedar, which provides both a symbol of ravaged nature and a striking compositional element. An artist friend of Homer’s remarked that “a woodsman could tell what kind of logs were burning by the sparks that rose in long curved lines.”

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art