About This Stamp
The ninth issuance in the American Treasures series features Boys in a Pasture, an 1874 painting by Winslow Homer. The painting is part of the Hayden Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Winslow Homer (1836–1910) is considered one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he began a two-year apprenticeship in a lithography shop at the age of 19 and afterwards became a freelance illustrator. In 1859, he moved to New York City, where he studied at the National Academy of Design and worked as a freelance artist for Harper’s Weekly magazine. In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, the magazine sent him to the front lines as an artist-correspondent.
At the end of 1866, Homer sailed for France. He spent ten months in Paris, where two of his Civil War paintings were shown at the 1867 Universal Exposition. After returning to the United States later that year, he devoted a decade to painting landscapes and scenes of rural America, ending his career as a commercial illustrator in 1875 to devote himself full-time to painting. During the 1870s, Homer also began working in watercolor and quickly mastered the medium, demonstrating the potential of watercolor painting to a new generation of American artists.
For the rest of his career, Homer created acclaimed oil paintings and watercolors of dramatic seascapes, hunting and nature scenes, and depictions of rural life, venturing to Cuba, Florida, and the Bahamas in search of subjects. He spent most of 1881 and 1882 in England, where he painted scenes from daily life in the seaside town of Cullercoats.
In 1883, Homer settled in Prouts Neck, Maine, where he thrived on solitude and continued to paint. He died in his studio on September 29,1910, at the age of 74.
In 1962, the U.S. Post Office Department honored Winslow Homer by issuing a 4-cent stamp featuring Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), a painting of a man and three boys sailing. In 1998, Homer’s painting The Fog Warning appeared as one of 20 designs on the Four Centuries of American Art stamp pane.
Inaugurated in 2001 with the Amish Quilts stamp pane, the American Treasures series consists of annual issuances intended to showcase beautiful works of American fine art and crafts.
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.