Interpretive Resource

In 1865 Winslow Homer completed the first of five paintings he would devote to the subject of croquet. Croquet Scene is probably the fourth in the series and the most compositionally striking in its use of light and color to define space. Homer’s interest in depicting this game coincided with the rise in its popularity among the upper classes in the United States. His choice of subject matter, as well as his decision to paint the subject in series, reveals its modernity, as does the lack of explicit narrative in the paintings. These works also have close ties to illustration, both to engravings in croquet rule books and to Homer’s early graphic work.

Homer received little formal training, but developed his artistic skills as an apprentice at John H. Bufford’s lithography shop in Boston between 1854 and 1857. He published his first illustration in Harper’s Weekly in 1857, and was hired as the magazine’s Civil War correspondent in 1861. The on-site drawings Homer made of battles and camp scenes were translated into engravings and subsequently published as illustrations; his earliest paintings also depict Civil War subjects, some of which closely relate to his illustrations. The artist was elected a full academician of the National Academy of Design in 1865, and donated the first of his croquet pictures, Croquet Player (1865; National Academy of Design, New York), to the institution upon his appointment.

Deriving from a fourteenth-century French peasant game called paille maille, the modern form of croquet was played in Ireland as early as the 1830s. The Irish introduced it to the English around 1852, who in turn interested Americans in the game. In 1866 Milton Bradley, the American toy manufacturer, patented the first croquet set mass-produced in the United States. Homer’s croquet paintings exhibit his familiarity both with the basic rules and with the more subtle social aspects of the game. Although the playing fields Homer depicted are not always believable, the strategic methods employed by the players in his paintings correspond to those described in popular rule books. Women predominate in these paintings, and their interaction with men is consistent with the etiquette of the game, which allowed females to compete with males, but required the former to conduct themselves with elegance and grace.

Croquet Scene is closely related to a larger, less finished composition at the Yale University Art Gallery. The two women in A Game of Croquet are almost identical to the two female figures in the foreground of the Art Institute canvas, although they stand alone before a low stone fence and a row of small trees. The Art Institute’s smaller composition is more compressed, with a dense thicket of trees closing the space behind the figures. The woman in red raises her skirt at the front hem in order to set her foot upon the ball to begin the croquet stroke that is intended to knock the ball of her opponent the woman in blue off the field. In a chivalrous act, a man, whose face we cannot see, kneels down to adjust the ball so that the woman can maintain her dignified pose. The long shadows extending to the left indicate that the game is being played in the afternoon, the preferred time of day for croquet matches. Homer’s attention to these technical and social details reveals his sensitivity to the nuances of the game.

The artist also included visual rhymes in the painting: the two women at the right wear straw hats with blue ribbons that echo the stripes of the croquet balls, as does the man’s straw boater and the bottom of the blue dress, which is ringed with blue, red, and black stripes. The diagonal from left to right formed by the figures provides the only sense of depth. The flattening effect of the trees in Croquet Scene does not appear in any of Homer’s other croquet paintings, which feature landscapes peppered with more spaciously placed trees and glimpses into the distance. The dark, dense foliage of the Art Institute’s painting also intensifies the colorful brilliance of the women’s dresses. The red dress in particular stands out against the greens of the grass and trees.

The popularity of croquet was undermined in the 1870s by accusations that the opportunities the game provided the sexes to intermingle and women to display athletic prowess would encourage immoral behavior. The potential titillation afforded by viewing the foot and ankle of the woman in red as she prepares to execute her croquet stroke is alluded to by the subservient position and intense gaze of the kneeling male figure. Painted at the peak of the game’s popularity, Croquet Scene both celebrates this pastime and hints at its controversial implications.