Shown nearly full-length, a young schoolteacher fills the foreground of _The Red Schoolhouse_. Standing on a wide dirt path or road, she gazes off to her right with a solemn expression, holding two books in her left hand and the striped fabric of her flounced skirt in her right. Around her neck the teacher wears a lacy triangular shawl known as a fichu that appears to be fastened with a square gold brooch or button. Her black and white ruffled bonnet is similarly elegant. Though only roughly sketched, the building behind the central figure is recognizable as a small red schoolhouse toward which a trio of schoolgirls appear to be headed. The surrounding landscape, lush and green, is silhouetted against a wide expanse of sky that glows with the warm, bright colors of early morning.
_The Red School House_ is related to a series of school subjects that Winslow Homer painted from 1871 to 1874. Though he varied the composition and narrative emphasis across the series, three elements remain consistent: a small red schoolhouse, its young female teacher, and a luminous mountain setting. Homer’s attention to this theme reflected a popular wave of nostalgia in late 19th-century America for small country schools and the simpler lifestyle they recalled. Part of a larger body of paintings of children completed in the 1870s, Homer’s school subjects, including _The Red School House_, simultaneously express the country’s sense of optimism for future generations in the wake of the Civil War.
More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication _American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I_, pages 305-309, which is available as a free PDF at <u>https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/american-paintings-19th-century-part-1.pdf</u>
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