Winslow Homer, Defiance, Inviting a Shot before Petersburg, 1864, oil on panel, 30.5 x 45.7cm. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan Founders Society Purchase with funds from Dexter M Ferry, Jr 51.66 © Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society purchase and Dexter M. Ferry Jr. fund / Bridgeman Images

WHEN a British cotton trader acquired an oil painting of pickers in a field by an American artist, it was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1878 as by “W Horner”.

The work of Winslow Homer (1836-1910) remains almost as little known this side of the Atlantic now as then.

So much so that National Gallery director Dr Gabriele Finaldi underlines it in his introductory comments to a new show in London*, and says: “Little known in Britain, Winslow Homer’s paintings explore the power, grandeur and beauty of nature as well as the dangers it poses to human life.”

Homer features conflict, struggle for survival, and isolation among his themes, and Dr Finaldi praises these as being treated “both poeti­c­ally and with dazzling technical bravura”. Yet no Homer painting is in a UK public collection.

Gazing at a bleak 1864 picture from the front lines of the American Civil War, showing a defiant Confederate soldier exposed on a hillock (Defiance, Inviting a Shot before Petersburg), another eminent academic art historian also admits to relative ignorance of the artist, while admiring his technique.

Winslow Homer, The Gale, 1883-93, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 122.7cm. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts Museum Purchase 1961.48. © Worcester Art Museum / Bridgeman Images

Nearby hangs a later war scene, Prisoners from the Front, where a Union officer confronts captured Confederates, including a fellow officer.

The mutual and obvious respect shown by the two young men has a poignancy beyond the average wartime scene.

And the sophistication and detail is remarkable from a largely self-taught artist who started out as an illustrator for publications such as Harper’s Weekly.

Homer would spend time in Paris, where the prisoners painting was shown at the 1867 Universal Exhibition.

Today’s London show charts Homer’s journeys, from post war adjustments of the Reconstruction period, on his return to America, with paintings in which he explores the lives of African Americans and the tensions of slavery and emancipation, and more.

Winslow Homer, The Life Brigade, 1882-3, oil on canvas, 31.8 x 44.1cm. Myron Kunin Collection of American Art, Minneapolis, MN © Midwest Art Conservation Center

Then, by 1881, Homer was in England taking in works by Turner, Constable, and others, and Greek and Roman treasures in the British Museum. He then spent some 18 months in the fishing village of Cullercoats, just north of Tynemouth, which proved the inspiration for a number of visceral depictions of the power of the sea and the dangers and hardships of life on the coast. Determination, heroism and resilience are recurring themes, but also vulnerability.

A powerful example of this is The Gale, which features a mother and child at the coast; but there is also the most remarkable of small oil sketches, never intended to be exhibited, entitled The Life Brigade, showing rescuers ready to act. It is likely from about 1882-83 and completed after his return to the US.

As contrast there is Homer’s monumental The Gulf Stream, 1899, reworked by 1906, shown here with attendant studies and sketches, which features a lone black man adrift on a damaged fishing boat, with stalks of sugar cane around him together with circling sharks. Homer steadfastly would not explain his artworks; but he wanted to deliver some sort of message. It’s understood a distant ship was added to the painting later, offering the possibility of rescue!

As well as the oils, Homer’s mastery of watercolour can be seen from paintings not only from the Cullercoats period but notably from his travels to the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, and Florida from 1884 to 1909.

Other highlights in a show, that includes around 50 paintings, are late oils, again often showing a rugged coast – Maine where he settled – but with fewer figures and more reflection upon his own mortality. Another highlight, his last canvas, Driftwood, again shows the overwhelming power of the sea and our fragility.

This show is organised with The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York.

• Winslow Homer: Force of Nature,National Gallery until January 8.
www.nationalgallery.co.uk