The Lookout – "All's Well"

On a sailing ship at night, time was kept by the bell. Every half hour it was struck, and the lookout in the bow called back to the officer of the watch that the lights were burning and all was well. Homer painted this in 1896, when he was 60, and gave the canvas over almost entirely to that one moment: the bronze bell, a rope of the rigging, and a bearded old sailor, mouth open on the call, under a dark sky with three bright stars. Homer sold it the next year to Thomas B. Clarke, a New York businessman who for years had bought American painters when few collectors bothered. In February 1899 Clarke sent his American paintings to auction in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts bought this canvas there for 3,500 dollars.