Winslow Homer, born Boston, MA - High Tide, from Every Saturday- An Illustrated Journal of Choice Reading, - 1870 - T-Shirt

High Tide is an 1870 wood engraving by Winslow Homer that catches the surf at full force, with a group of figures caught up in the rush of the shoreline.

Visual Elements & Composition

The engraving is built entirely in monochrome, shaded in pale grey, sand beige, charcoal and dark grey. Its horizontal format opens onto a wide band of sky with clouds, with the waves and beach filling the lower frame. A young woman wrings out her hair at the water's edge, a woman in a long dark cloak stands on the sand, and a seated girl in a dark dress bends to adjust a shoe. A single dropped shoe lies on the sand, and a distant ship sits on the horizon. The printed caption reads "HIGH TIDE. - FROM A PAINTING BY WINSLOW HOMER. (SEE PAGE 499.)" along with the signature "HOMER."

Meaning & Symbolism

Homer made this image for Every Saturday: An Illustrated Journal of Choice Reading, a periodical that brought his illustrations to a wide American readership in the years when he was moving from working for the press toward becoming one of the country's leading painters and printmakers. The scene pairs the raw power of rising water with the everyday lives of people on the coast, a theme that runs through his maritime work. Figures stepping in and out of the surf suggest the ordinary rhythms of seaside life, where leisure and the sea's force sit side by side.