About the Artwork
A woman dressed in red turns away from the viewer and blows a metal horn toward an unseen field. The deep overhang of a porch covered with climbing roses protects her from the summer sun. The buckets, barrels, and wooden boxes lining the porch suggest this is a working farmhouse. She is calling laborers home for dinner, as the noontime meal was known in the 1870s.
Winslow Homer rendered this subject five times between 1870 and 1873 in paintings, sketches, and a print for the widely read magazine Harper’s Weekly. In the earlier 1870 painting The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside) (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), the background opens to a green field dotted with farm workers she calls to the meal. In this final version, painted in 1873, he isolated the woman in an enclosed space with only the call of the horn linking her to the surrounding world.
The Dinner Horn
1873
Winslow Homer
1836-1910
American
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 11 7/8 × 14 1/4 inches (30.2 × 36.2 cm) Framed: 20 7/8 × 23 × 3 1/2 inches (53 × 58.4 × 8.9 cm)
Paintings
American Art before 1950
Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
47.81
Copyright Not Evaluated
Markings
Signed and dated, middle right, on railing: HOMER 1873
Provenance
James Carr (New York, New York, USA).inherited by granddaughter, Mrs. Clarence Crocker (East Orange, New Jersey, USA).
on consignment with Ferargil Galleries (New York, New York, USA).
1936, on consignment with Kleemann Galleries (New York, New York, USA).
1937, Stephen C. Clark.
on consignment with Macbeth Gallery (New York, New York, USA).
1947-present, gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Winslow Homer Centenary. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 1936.
Richardson, E. P. "The Dinner Horn by Winslow Homer." Art Quarterly 11, 2 (Spring 1948): pp. 153-157.
Winslow Homer: Illustrator. Exh. cat., Smith College Museum of Art. Northampton, MA, 1951, p. 19.
Winslow Homer. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1958, no. 26.
Romantic America. Exh. cat., John Herron Art Museum. Indianapolis, 1961, no. 25.
Wilmerding, J. Winslow Homer. New York, 1972, p. 71 (pl. 22).
“Family Art Game.” DIA Advertising Supplement. Detroit Free Press (April 27, 1980): p. 5 (ill.).
Woman. Exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art. Evanston, IL, 1984, p. 18, no. 11 (ill.).
Coming Away: Winslow Homer & England. Exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum. Worcester, Massachusetts, 2017, p. 44 (pl. 13).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Winslow Homer, The Dinner Horn, 1873, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr., 47.81.
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