Perhaps no other American painting is at once so familiar and so little understood as Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream (1899). For more than a century, scholars have praised the artist and yet puzzled over this harrowing scene of a black man adrift in the open sea, in a derelict boat surrounded by sharks. Critical commentary, when it was departed at all from the painting's composition and coloring, has generally viewed "The Gulf Stream as a universal parable on the human condition, or as an anecdotal image of a coastal storm. There is more to this stark masterpiece, says Peter H. Wood, a historian and an authority on images of blacks in Homer's work. To understand the painting in less noticed but more meaningful ways, says Wood, we must dive more deeply into Homer's past as an artist and our own past as a nation. Looking at "The Gulf Stream and the development of Homer's social conscience in ways that traditional art history and criticism do not allow, Wood places the picture within the tumultuous legacy of slavery and colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century. Viewed in light of such events as the Spanish American War, the emergence of Jim Crow practices in the South, and the publication of Rudyard Kipling's epochal poem "The White Man's Burden, The Gulf Stream takes on deeper layers of meaning. The storm on the horizon, the sharks and flying fish in the water, the sugarcane stalks protruding from the boat's hold--these are just some of the elements in what Wood reveals to be a richly symbolic tableau of the Black Atlantic world, linking the histories of Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. By examining the "present" that shaped "The Gulf Stream more than a century ago,and by resurrecting half-forgotten elements of the "past" that sustain the painting's abiding mystery and power, Wood suggests a promising way to use history to comprehend art and art to fathom history.

"Weathering the Storm is an engaging study of one painting: Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream, painted in 1899. According to Peter H. Wood, who teaches history at Duke University, previous interpretations of the well-known painting can be divided into three categories: those that view The Gulf Stream as a universal allegory for crisis and rudderlessness; those that claim it depicts actual historical events; and those that describe the painting in personal or psychological terms, as Homer's representation of his own grief after the death of his father. Wood believes that these interpretations are inadequate on their own. In this book, based on his 2003 Lamar Memorial Lectures at Mercer University, Wood presents a persuasive new historical interpretation of The Gulf Stream, grounded in Homer's life and career and the history of slavery and race relations in America. The book is thus more than the modest analysis of a single painting that it initially appears to be; it also represents a challenge to scholars who assess paintings in strictly formal terms, without considering their social and cultural settings. Wood is not the first to issue such a challenge, but he offers here a fine example of how to conduct historically informed analysis with sensitivity and insightfulness. He argues, for example, that the poise and dignity of the recumbent black figure in The Gulf Stream is consistent with Homer's earlier artistic work but strikingly at odds with most contemporary depictions of African Americans, depictions which commonly perpetuated crude racial stereotypes. Wood also shows that The Gulf Stream contains numerous coded references to critical events of the late nineteenth century, including the Cuban War, Ku Klux Klan violence, Jim Crow segregation, and black disenfranchisement. In his final chapter, Wood examines the imagery of sharks and sugarcane to argue that the painting also remembers the transatlantic slave trade and American slavery. In his able hands, The Gulf Stream is shown to be a powerful collection of images confronting viewers with some of the darkest and most disturbing chapters in American history. With Wood's hand so firmly on the rudder, Weathering the Storm is well worth the ride." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

Winslow Homer's depiction of a lone black man adrift in perilous waters in Gulf Stream has puzzled generations of critics, who have typically emphasized its universality. In his examination of the work, however, Wood (history, Duke U.) considers Homer's social conscience and the historical context of his work. Viewing the painting in the light of Jim Crow laws, colonialism and the Spanish American War, he finds a tableau linking the histories of Africa, the Caribbean and the United States.
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