THE GULF STREAM” – 1899 Winslow Homer was one of best and most influential American painters in the 19th century. Having worked as an illustrator, Homer became first known for a number of paintings with motifs from the American Civil War. The most marked change of his highly individual style took place in the early 1880s during a stay in a small fishing village on the north coast of England and later in the Bahamas. In these places, 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. Winslow Homer’s “The Gulf Stream” - oil on canvas - is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. This painting shows a solitary black sailor in a small, disabled boat adrift in a tumultuous sea, at the center of a ring of predatory sharks, with an approaching ship in the distance on the left. http://tvm.tigtail.org The drama of the sea scene is imbued with an epic and heroic quality. The theme expressed in this work of art is: