Lecture on Artist Winslow Homer to be Held at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Art historian Elizabeth Johns, visiting fellow at the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, will give a lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library of Smith Hall. Her lecture, titled "Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation," is free and open to the public.

Johns looks at this late 19th-century American realist painter through his understandings of observation and nature. She frames the analysis in the context of the psychosocial theories of human development first explored by Erik Erikson and elaborated by Daniel Levinson and others.

In raising questions about Homer's personal investment in his images - from his early wood-engraved illustrations to his late paintings of the ocean at Prout's Neck, Maine - Johns looks at the dynamics of Homer's family of origin, his relationships and ambitions during his middle and late years, and the natural theology that underlay his paintings of the ocean.

Johns is author of the forthcoming "Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation" (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2002).

Johns earned her Ph.D. at the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University. She is a graduate of the Program for Experienced Spiritual Directors, Center for Religious Development at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. She is professor emerita of art history at the University of Pennsylvania.