Winslow Homer var med sin yderst individuelle stil og dens forankring i den traditionelle amerikanske realisme en af det 19. århundredes ypperste og mest indflydelsesrige amerikanske malere. Efter at have arbejdet som illustrator blev Homer kendt for en række billeder med motiver fra den amerikanske borgerkrig; skarpskytter, slag, krigsfanger og soldater. I 1870'erne var motiverne i hans malerier primært gammeldags landlige værdier i et land, der var under stærk forandring p.g.a. bl.a. den stigende urbanisering. Den mest markante ændring skete i begyndelsen af 1880'erne under et ophold i en lille fiskerlandsby på Englands nordøstkyst. Her fandt Homer det motiv, der kom til at optage ham resten af livet: Mennesket imod havet, Selvet i den vældige og indifferente natur. 

With his highly individual style and its roots in traditional American realism Winslow Homer was one of best and most influential American painters in the 19th century. Having worked as an illustrator Homer became known for a number of paintings with motifs from the American Civil War: sharpshooters, POWs and soldiers. In the 1870s his paintings were primarily of old-fashioned rural values in a country under rapid change because of e.g. increasing urbanisation. The most marked change took place in the early 1880s during a stay in a small fishing village on the north coast of England. Here Homer found the motif that would occupy him for the rest of his life: Man against the sea, the Self in the huge and indifferent nature.

This, Homer says, is what the voyage of life comes down to: hanging on and 
facing down your death when all hope is gone and there are no witnesses.

Robert Hughes
America's Supreme Realist.
TIME Magazine,
June 24, 1996