Winslow Homer. 1836-1910.
The etching is presented in a reproduction period Stamford White gold leaf frame.
Saved. 1889. Etching. Goodrich 102. 16 3/4 x 27 3/4 (sheet 21 5/8 x 32 5/8). Printed by G.W.H. Ritchie, New York. Published by C. Klackner, New York. Signed in the plate, lower left. Illustrated: Goodrich, The Graphic Art of Winslow Homer. An impression on simili-Japan paper. Carefully printed with plate tone in the rocks and figures; but clean-wiped in the waves to emphasize the figures being suspended in air. An ethereal, atmospheric impression of this very rare etching. Price upon request.
Saved is Homer's largest and most dramatic etching. It is also extremely rare. Saved is one of the major images of the painter-etching revival in late nineteenth-century American graphic art.
Lloyd Goodrich writes, in his catalogue of Homer's etchings (New York: The Museum of Graphic Art, 1958): 17:
"In 1889 Homer etched a second version of "The Life Line', titled 'Saved", his largest print and in many ways his finest. Here the transformation from the oil and the earlier etching is more fundamental than in any other print. Aside from reversing the figures, he has changed the entire setting from a wide view of rolling waves and distant cliff to a close-up of the surf raging on nearby rocks, an image much more immediate and forceful. Instead of the roller-coaster waves of the earlier print, the breakers now create an intricate pattern, alive with movement, and in their fine design suggestive of Japanese art. They form a ground completely integrated with the figures, part of the whole picture plane. In a plastic sense, this is the most unified and fully realized of all his etchings.
There are also significant changes in the figures. In the painting and the previous print the man's legs with their heavy boots were obtrusively prominent, but in "saved" there is only a glimpse of one leg, and the man's head is covered by the flying scarf, so that he becomes a strange shrouded form, out of which two strong arms emerge, clasping the woman's body. The woman's figure is now dominant, the man's subordinate. Her body, fully revealed instead of partly shadowed as in previous versions, is one of the most completely realized forms in all his work, sculptural in its long rhythmic lines. The windblown drapery clinging to her legs takes flowing shapes that complete the whole movement of the interlocked figures. The modelling of her figure shows a linear variety and skill greater than in any of his prints. The whole picture is alive with energy and motion; few of his works are so plastic, so purely composed of form and movement. "Saved" is no mere repetition of an earlier picture; it is a new creation -- one of his most complete works in any medium, prophetic of the finest of his mature paintings."
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