Posted: 8/10/2013 5:34:50 PM EDT
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Tonight's featured avatar belongs to none other than member, 4v50 - a member of the site since 2000! 
His avatar is a watercolor painted by the artist Winslow Homer. The painting is titled "Sharpshooter on Picket Duty". 
Homer Winslow was a newspaper illustrator during the Civil War. Artists would travel with the Army and send back drawings to appear in newpapers and other publications. Illustrators were used before photography came into use. Below is a wood engraving that would have been used at that time. Notice that the soldier in Homer's painting uses a scope on his rifle. 
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Thank you Johnny Reno.  . Homer deliberately made the sharpshooter's face vague as to show the anonymity of the sharpshooter who could shoot down an unwary foe. Homer had the opportunity to peer through a telescope rifle and walked away thinking it was murder. Interestingly, Homer had trouble selling the painting. The engraving, on the other hand, was sharp and focused.
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Quoted:
Has anyone noticed the one significant difference between the watercolor and the wood engraving? Shoes. In the painting he appears to be wearing something from the L.L.Bean catalog. ETA: Should have refreshed the page. 
Still looks like a guy wearing a baseball cap and duck boots to me. |
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Quoted:
Thank you Johnny Reno. . Homer deliberately made the sharpshooter's face vague as to show the anonymity of the sharpshooter who could shoot down an unwary foe. Homer had the opportunity to peer through a telescope rifle and walked away thinking it was murder. Interestingly, Homer had trouble selling the painting. The engraving, on the other hand, was sharp and focused.What's funny is that when I see the picture (I never look too closely at it), I think it's a CGI...like a really old, un-sharpified CGI. From a hunting PC game or something. 
ETA: Going to view it in a whole other light, now.
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Quoted: Thank you Johnny Reno. . Homer deliberately made the sharpshooter's face vague as to show the anonymity of the sharpshooter who could shoot down an unwary foe. Homer had the opportunity to peer through a telescope rifle and walked away thinking it was murder. Interestingly, Homer had trouble selling the painting. The engraving, on the other hand, was sharp and focused.Goya did the same thing (hid the faces of the firing squad and all but one of the about to be killed hostages) in his 1814 masterpiece "The Third of May 1808," an amazing painting that hangs in the Prado in Madrid. Maybe Homer was aware of that painting.  |
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