  About the Artwork
  
  
  The young woman leaning against a stone wall holds a basket of flowers picked from the mountain laurel bushes behind her. Native to the eastern United States, this tenacious plant produces beautiful but ephemeral flowers and flourishes in inhospitable settlings. Perhaps the laurel served as a metaphor for Winslow Homer, who made a special practice of painting moments of unexpected beauty he saw in everyday rural life in New England and New York villages during the 1870s.

According to oral tradition, the laurel in this painting grew on the land of a farmer who asked Homer to paint his portrait. When the artist refused on the grounds that he was not a portrait painter, the farmer chopped down the laurel in a fit of anger.
  
  
  Title
  Girl and Laurel
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1879
  
  Artist
  Winslow Homer
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1836-1910
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 22 5/8 × 15 3/4 inches (57.5 × 40 cm)
  Framed: 28 1/4 × 21 1/4 × 1 7/8 inches (71.8 × 54 × 4.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  40.56
  
  
  Copyright
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