Blackboard

Winslow Homer

National Gallery of Art

A young woman with pale skin stands with her back to us as she points to a blackboard with a long stick in this vertical watercolor painting. Her body is angled away to our right, and she turns her head so her face is in profile, also to our right. The blue eye we can see looks down under a furrowed brow, and her small lips are closed over a rounded chin. She holds the pointer in her right hand as her left arm tucks across her lower back so that hand hooks into the right elbow. Her honey-blond hair is tied with a light tan ribbon like a headband, and a braid is coiled at the back of her head. She wears a checkered white and pale-green pinafore over a long, sage-green dress. The toe of one black shoe peeks out from under the hem. The blackboard behind her is drawn with three rows of geometric shapes outlined in white chalk. Her pointer aims at a circle near the top right corner. The floor and upper half of the wall behind and above the board are pink-tinged tan, and nickel gray fills the lower half of the wall beneath the board. The artist signed and dated the lower right of the blackboard, “Homer '77.”