TitleHomer Dodge Martin
Artist
Winslow Homer
(American, 1836 - 1910)
Date1868-1869
MediumOil on canvas mounted on panel
DimensionsUnframed: 30 × 25 in.
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, May 11, 1868
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number589-P
Label TextHomer D. Martin, who was a friend of Winslow Homer, was elected an Associate at the Academy's annual meeting of May 8, 1867. The following April his qualifying portrait was delivered-its authorship unrecorded. The Council clearly found the work wanting, for it acted to "return [the portrait] to Mr. Martin with the request that it be better finished." However, at the Council meeting two weeks later and just two days before his election would have been voided if a portrait were not accepted, "A communication was received from Mr. H. D. Martin, Associate elect, accompanying his portrait by Homer requesting the Council to accept this portrait until he could find time to sit for another one." The Council acquiesced. A year later, Martin secured the Council's permission to borrow the portrait "in order that it may be finished." It is possible that Homer's portrait was a hastily executed replacement for Martin's initial presentation, but more likely it was the one needing to be "better finished" and then accepted.The Homer scholar Lloyd Goodrich, in acknowledging the technical shortcomings of the present portrait, speculated that the artist might have executed it as an exercise, "for the fun of it," some time before Martin's need for a diploma submission arose. However, the dimensions of the work, the Academy's requisite thirty by twenty-five inches (although a common standard for portraits), suggest that it was done explicitly for presentation to the Academy. Goodrich also noted that Homer had not previously essayed a full-scale portrait in oil, having only done small watercolor sketches and drawings of close friends and family, and that the unimpressive character of the work could be attributed to his limited experience in the medium and with the subject. George Maynard, in his "Notes on Academy Meeting Minutes" for May 11, 1868, (National Academy Archives) remarked "While I was cataloguing and identifying the portraits - not being able to identify the artist who painted Mr. Martin's portrait, I by chance inquired of Winslow Homer if he knew. "Why I painted it, he replied [crossed out], I tried to make it look as much like a landscape as possible."
