AMERICAN ART Museum to buy Winslow Homer home

The painter was inspired by the Maine coast, a curator said.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- The Portland Museum of Art will buy and preserve the home and studio of Winslow Homer, one of the greatest American artists of the 19th century.
The studio on Scarborough's Prouts Neck is now owned by Homer's great-grandnephew and is expected to cost between $1 million and $2 million.
A two-year, $12 million fund-raising drive will be undertaken to buy and preserve the studio, a former carriage house with a balcony looking out over the Atlantic Ocean that provided inspiration for Homer's seascapes, museum spokeswoman Kristin Levesque said this week.
The money also would be used to fund a public education program and to create a Winslow Homer study center in Portland, and create an endowment for the studio's upkeep, she said.
Jessica Nicoll, the museum's chief curator, said the studio where Homer lived from 1883 until his death in 1910 is where he transcended the maritime art tradition and produced some of his most notable work. When Homer arrived, he was already an accomplished painter, but there was something about the craggy coast that inspired him, Nicoll said.
Inspired by coast
"The coast of Maine nurtured his creativity and inspired him to grow as an artist and to create an art form that was entirely new," she said. "This is arguably one of the most historic sites in the history of American painting."
Many of his paintings focused on the struggle of man against nature and depicted weather-beaten fishermen and angry, lashing waves. But his artwork covers a full range of moods, said Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., who has written several books on Homer and is a former senior curator of American and British art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Homer finished his famous painting "Snap the Whip" in 1872. It's in the collection of Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown.