Winslow Homer (1836 -1910)
Dinner Horn, 1870
Oil on panel, 5.6 x 9 in.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This diminutive painting is one of a series of dinner horn paintings featuring the same model in various costumes and settings.  Each depicts a young woman calling men in from the fields for dinner. The landscape is reminiscent of the Hurley Flats and the farmland that has defined Hurley from its pre-colonial past up to the present day.

Winslow Homer (1836 -1910)
Dinner Horn
Harper’s Weekly, Vol. XIV, June 11, 1870
Wood engraving on paper, image: 3.7 x 9 in

In this engraving Homer plays with the effect of sunlight and wind on a figure and her flowing dress.  In the shadows of the house the table is set for dinner, and she is calling the workers in from the hay field.

Both the wide open landscape suggesting the Hurley Flats and the well pole are features shared with the Dinner Horn painting of the same year.  The milk pans leaning against the house identify this as a dairy farm.  There were once twenty dairy farms along the length of the Flats.

Winslow Homer (1836 -1910)
Dinner Horn, 1873
Oil on canvas, 11.8 x 14.2 in
Detroit Institute of Arts

This version of Dinner Horn shares many elements with Girl Shelling Peas.  Both paintings depict a young woman engaged in a domestic farm activity on the same porch with its scalloped frieze, sometimes called "gingerbread."  The open door gives you a sense of the wide sweep of sunlit farmland outside the cool confines of the porch.