Provenance
Given by the artist to Charles Collins, New York state;[1] by descent in the Collins family to Virginia Collins Cronister [Mrs. Hugh M. Cronister], Cambridge, Vermont;[2] (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 23 April 1981, no. 50, bought in); (Nicholas Hubby, Boston); Richard A. Manoogian, Grosse Point, Michigan; (Vose Galleries, Boston); sold May 1985 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1994 to NGA.
[1] This provenance was given for the painting in the 1981 sale catalogue. However, _The New York Times_ of 26 February 1871, reporting on the exhibition and sale at the Somerville Gallery on 23 February, lists a painting by Winslow Homer titled "Dinner Horn" as having sold for $150 to an unnamed buyer. This was probably the National Gallery painting, and Charles Collins was possibly the buyer.
[2] The provenance for the painting given in Lloyd Goodrich, edited and expanded by Abigail Booth Gerdts, _Record of Works by Winslow Homer_, New York, 2005: 2:no. 368, details the Collins family members who owned the painting: Charles Collins' niece, Mrs. Maria Collins Barton, Summit, New Jersey; her niece, Mrs. Sarah Louise Collins Davis, Florida, by 1974; her niece, Mrs. Cronister, by 1980.
Accession Number
1994.59.2
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 48.9 x 34.9 cm (19 1/4 x 13 3/4 in.) | framed: 67.6 x 53.3 x 5.7 cm (26 5/8 x 21 x 2 1/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting Canvas American
Background & Context
Background Story
The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside) (1870) depicts a woman blowing a horn to signal mealtime—a subject that connects domestic ritual to the coastal landscape that would become Homer's lifelong subject. The dinner horn, sounded to call fishermen home or workers in from the fields, was a familiar sound in 19th-century rural and coastal communities. Homer's painting transforms this routine signal into an image of considerable visual power: the woman's figure, silhouetted against sky and sea, creates a composition that combines portraiture, landscape, and genre narrative in a single image. The year 1870 is significant: this was one of Homer's earliest coastal subjects, painted the same year he began visiting Gloucester, Massachusetts, and before his transformative Cullercoats experience. The painting thus represents the beginning of Homer's lifelong engagement with the coast—the subject that would define his mature work. The horn-blowing woman, seen against the coastal sky, becomes an emblem of the relationship between domestic life and maritime work—the woman calls, and the men at sea will respond, creating the social structure that sustains coastal communities. Homer's early treatment already shows the spatial confidence—large sky, strong figure, economical landscape— that would characterize his best marine subjects.
Cultural Impact
The Dinner Horn influenced how coastal community life was represented in American art, establishing the image of the shore-based woman calling home the seafarers as a convention of maritime genre painting. The painting influenced Homer's own later work, establishing a compositional type—strong figure against coastal sky—that he would return to throughout his career. The subject influenced how domestic and maritime life were visually connected in American art and illustration.
Why It Matters
This painting matters because it marks the beginning of Homer's engagement with the coastal subject that would define his career. From this relatively modest genre painting, Homer would develop the marine art that made him America's greatest painter of the sea. The Dinner Horn thus provides a key document for understanding how great artistic traditions begin—not with dramatic declarations but with simple observations that contain the seeds of future achievement.
