Winslow Homer, born Boston, MA - Tenth Commandment, from Harper's Weekly, March 12, 1870 - 1870 - T-Shirt

Winslow Homer's 1870 wood engraving Tenth Commandment packs a whole moral story into a single crowded page, with two women in bustle gowns peering into a cabinet at its centre.

Visual Elements & Composition

The image is built entirely from black ink and grey hatching on cream paper, with the cream ground carrying roughly half the picture. Small circular vignettes frame scenes of everyday life: a man at a desk, a cow and calf, a woman with a broom, and a mansion by a lake. A uniformed bellhop with a raised arm sits among them, and an arched banner carries the words Tenth Commandment across the top. The printed text reads "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house" and "Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law," so the words and pictures work together on the page.

Meaning & Symbolism

The title points to the commandment against covetousness, and the vignettes show the desires that commandment warns against: a house, a household, a comfortable life. Homer sets these temptations inside a polite, contemporary scene, so the morality sits just beneath the surface of ordinary social life. The piece was published in Harper's Weekly on March 12, 1870, during the post-Civil War years, when the magazine carried narrative images into American homes. It comes from Homer's period as a magazine illustrator, when he was sharpening the draftsmanship and storytelling that later defined his paintings and watercolours.

Designed for the Wearer's Chest

This is a dense engraving, and a chest-sized print gives every vignette room to be read at a glance. The cabinet scene and the banner sit where the eye lands first, while the smaller circular scenes reward a closer look as the wearer moves. The vertical magazine-page layout suits the shape of a tee, so the commandment reads clearly from across the room.