PolarBear
Major
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
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My "watercolor" of a young American woman visiting New Hampshire in the 1880s was inspired by Winslow Homer's 1868 oil painting The Bridle Path, White Mountains now in the collection of the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Homer was in New Hampshire in the summers of 1868 and 1869. In the years after the American Civil War there was an increased amount of tourism in the United States and the rise in popularity of resorts such as Newport (Rhode Island), Bar Harbor (Maine) and the White Mountains. An expanding urban population with leisure time sought relief from summer heat by flocking to these destinations by train, steamship and stage coach. In 1868 when Homer painted this scene atop Mt. Washington, a cog railway had just been completed to help tourists get to the summit more easily. Many, however, like Homer's young woman took the bridle path or horse trails to the top. Homer is punning on the word bridle (bridal) since many young women went to the resorts in search of husbands. Homer's aim in his painting was to capture the essence of the independent modern American Girl seen here without a chaperone. In American literature the New American Girl was best represented by the heroine of Henry James's 1878 novel Daisy Miller who scandalizes Europe with her flirtatious and outgoing manner. The film of the novel starring Cybil Shephard was an excellent adaptation of the book.
