After the Hurricane, Bahamas

After the Hurricane, Bahamas — Winslow Homer. 1899.

Medium: Transparent watercolor, with touches of opaque watercolor, rewetting, blotting and scraping, over graphite, on moderately thick, moderately textured (twill texture on verso), ivory wove paper. Dimensions: 37.2 × 54.2 cm (14 11/16 × 21 3/8 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Revered as America’s master of watercolor, Winslow Homer did not begin working in the medium until the mature age of thirty-seven. As a watercolorist, Homer adapted his practice to the diverse locales he visited. His sojourns in the tropics took him to the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, and various locations in Florida. In each new environment, the self-taught artist pushed the flexible medium in new directions as he applied his increasingly sophisticated understanding of color and light to a new set of atmospheric conditions. This compelling watercolor was painted during Homer’s second trip to the Bahamas in the winter of 1898–99. Depicting a luckless man washed up on the beach, surrounded by fragments of his shattered craft, the work demonstrates the artist’s fascination with the rapid and dangerous weather changes of the region. Here sunlight glints through gradually thinning storm clouds. Homer employed thickly applied opaque red and yellow pigments for the seaweed tossed on the sand, creating a contrast with the thin washes and fluid brushstrokes that he used to render the receding waves.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.