Prout's Neck, Breaking Wave

Prout's Neck, Breaking Wave — Winslow Homer. 1887.

Medium: Transparent watercolor, with touches of opaque watercolor, rewetting, blotting and scraping, over resist and traces of graphite, on medium weight, moderately textured, ivory wove paper, laid down on cream wove paper. Dimensions: 38 × 54.4 cm (15 × 21 7/16 in.).

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

Philip Beam has identified the site for Prout’s Neck, Breaking Wave as “the shoreline a little above water’s edge in the vicinity of Cannon Rock, looking toward High Cliff,” adding that Homer “fished from this point almost daily during the summer and fall and must have seen such waves "a thousand times" (Beam 1966, n.p.). Homer’s familiarity with the site is born out by the techniques that he used to capture the relentless churning movement of the massive wave. Although he used very little graphite in this work, he mapped out the frothy whites of the wave by making staccato marks with resist , probably using chalk for this purpose. Homer used almost every trick he knew to achieve the varied textures of water, shore, and sky, including layering, blotting, rewetting, and scraping. Although carefully planned and carried out, the final effect is vigorous and immediate.

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.