A Sick Chicken

Winslow Homer

Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper

National Gallery of Art

A Sick Chicken depicts a young girl standing before a whitewashed stone farmhouse, tenderly cradling an ailing bird in her hands. Executed in watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper, the work exemplifies Homer's mastery of the medium during the pivotal early 1870s, when he first committed seriously to watercolor as an artistic practice. Homer (1836–1910), who began his career as a commercial illustrator before emerging as one of the foremost painters of nineteenth-century America, brought to this intimate rural scene the same attentive realism that defined his broader oeuvre. The delicate rendering and quiet palette convey both the tenderness of the subject and the unpretentious dignity of American farm life that Homer observed during his visits to the Hudson Valley region of New York.