Natural within Boston, Massachusetts, Homer was apprenticed to a Boston commercial lithographer at the age of Xix. By 1857 his freelance illustration career wwhen afoot & he contributed to magazines as ''Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly.

His illustrations, mostly engravings, come characterized by filtered outlines, simplified forms, striking direct contrast of weak & dark, & lively figure groupings — qualities that remained crucial throughout his career.

Around 1859 he opened a studio within New York City, and began his painting career.

Harpist's sent Homer to the front of the American Civil War (1861 – 1865), where he sketched battle scenes & mundane campy life. Although a drawings did non develop lot attention at a period, it influenced lot of his late operate.

Back at his studio when a war, Homer placed to operate in many war-related paintings, among the babies Sharpshooter in Picket Duty, & Captive from either a Front which is noted for its objectiveness & realism.

Fallowing exhibiting at a National Academy of Design, Homer traveled to France in 1867 and practiced painting landscapes when continuing to function for Harpist's. Though his interest inside depicting natual lightly parellels a impressionists interest in natural weak, a class action did non directly affect his act.

Throughout a 1870s he portrayed mostly rural or idyllic scenes of domestic life, tykes swimming, & resorts. Homer gained acclamation as a painter in the late 1870s and early 1880s. His 1872 composition, Snap the Whip'', showed at a 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Inside 1873 he started to painting by owning watercolours, and a medium became when crucial to him when oil paint. His watercolor painting indicate the new, self-generated, free, eventually natural style. Thenceforth, Homer rarely went anywhere while forgoing paper, brushes & a body of water paints.

Homer it used to be that remarked,

Within 1875 he quit working as a commercial illustrator, and concentrated in painting.

He travelled widely, spending deuce years (1881 – 1882) in English coastal village of Cullercoats, Northumberland, where he rekindled his boyhood interest in a sea, & painted the local fishermen & their families.

Back in the U.S., he moved to Prout's Neck, Maine (near Scarborough) and painted the seascapes for which he is perhaps best known. Leading light among these spectacular struggle-sustaining-nature and severity images come Banks Fisher, Eight Bells, Gulf Stream, Rum Cay, Mending a Nets, & Searchlight, Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba.

To call for inspiration for his seascapes, Homer typically ventured in a period of the wintertime to locations like Florida and the Caribbean.

Homer died at a age of 74 inside his Prout's Neck studio. His painting, Shoot a Rapids, remained bare.