George Deem

School of Winslow Homer

Date:	1986
Medium:	Oil on canvas
Size inches:	39 1/2 x 32
Size cm:	100.3 x 81.3
Signature:	Signed and dated lower right and inscribed on the reverse.
Location:	Private Collection, New York

The deceptively twinned upper and lower halves of Deem's dazzling School of Winslow Homer juxtapose differing versions of Homer's nostalgically remembered schoolroom. Deem's illusionistic "actual" schoolroom quotes Country School (1871) while his desk sketch loosely quotes New England Country School-- which Homer painted a year or two later, leaving out a few of the children ....This painting is one of Deem's most effective and exciting explorations of the schoolroom theme. His mirroring of the room in a monochromatic sketch is brilliant -- turning the drawing on the desk into a still, dark pool of reflective memory. The room itself has assumed a mirror-identity. The vanished children and schoolmistress in the twinned room sharpen our awareness of Homer's formal play of symmetry and asymmetry in the original paintings. ...Most vitally of all, Deem has transposed himself into this country schoolroom of Homer's -- since he is the unseen student whose hand has, in all truth, produced the sketch on the solitary desk. (Irene McManus, Introduction to Art School by George Deem, 1993, 2005).

References
Winslow Homer, The Country School, 1871. St Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
Winslow Homer, The Country School, 1873. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts

School of Winslow Homer, 1986.
When I was engaged with my art school paintings, a series of paintings of schoolrooms in the styles of various artists and schools of painting, I looked at any artist's work with an eye for the possibilities it offered me of making a painting of a schoolroom interior. Winslow Homer's The Country School came early to mind. This painting presents so complete an image of a schoolroom that I departed from my format of painting an interior with rows of school desks facing a blackboard. Instead I quoted Winslow Homer's 1871 painting The Country School in its entirety. Winslow Homer often depicts distance through the device of a prominent form in the foreground. In his manner I placed a single desk up front in my painting, a large form that lurches into the space of his image of the country school. I painted an image of a Conte crayon drawing on paper lying on that school desk. The source of this "drawing" is another Winslow Homer painting of the same school room that he painted two years later. In my quotation of his later painting I made it into an image of a drawing on paper as an object more likely to be found on a school desk. (George Deem, New York, August 8, 2001).

Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville, Indiana

Exhibition date:	May 12 - July 11 1993
Institution:	Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville, Indiana
Works Shown:	Ashcan School Barbizon School, The Bauhaus School The Fauve School Hoosier School Hudson River School 1985 L'Ecole de Paris L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts New York School, The School of Athens School of Balthus School of Bingham School of Canaletto 1 School of Canaletto 2 School of Caravaggio School of Chardin School of de Chirico School of Degas School of Eakins School of Georges de La Tour School of Hopper School of Ingres School of Juan Gris School of Mantegna School of Matisse 1 School of Matisse 2 School of Modigliani School of Piero Della Francesca School of Rembrandt School of Sargent School of Stuart Davis School of Thought School of Velazquez School of Vermeer School of Veronese School of Watteau School of Winslow Homer Schoolroom 1979

The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts

Exhibition date:	April 11 - September 1, 2012
Institution:	The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts
Works Shown:	A Stool, A Chair, and a Map An American Rug The Art of Painting, diptych Artist in His Studio, The (diptych) Ashcan School Bingham Ceiling Courbet Palette Deem Palette Deem Vermeer (Self-Portrait) Easel Painting Everybody's Schoolroom Extended Vermeer George Washington and His Portrait The Landscape Painter Manet Palette Modigliani Palette Profile Red Chair, The Sargent Vermeer School of Sargent School of Winslow Homer Self-Portrait (1992) Seven Vermeer Corners Studio Visit Vermeer Detail 2003 Vermeer's Map Woman with a Water Pitcher Yankee Vermeer Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Again