Children Sitting on a Fence

Museum record 45349: Children Sitting on a Fence by Winslow Homer. A verified entry point for discovery.

What to notice

For Children Sitting on a Fence (record 45349), start with modern, expressive, atmospheric. Compare the focal subject, edge treatment, and atmosphere before moving on.

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During the years of Reconstruction (1865–1876), children and childhood were popular subjects in art and literature, representing both the nation’s hope for the future and its nostalgia for the simpler, more innocent era that preceded the great social and economic upheavals of the Civil War. Homer understood and fostered this conception of childhood; small groups of children in rural settings dominate his work of the early 1870s. The graphite study Children Sitting on a Fence , on which the watercolor Chi…