HName:  Homer, William Innes

DateBorn:  1929

Placeborn:  Merion, PA

Datedied:

Placedied:

HDescrip:  Americanist; H. Rodney Sharp Professor (emeritus) of the department of art history at the University of Delaware.   Homer's father was Austin Homer, president of the J. E. Caldwell Company, a jeweler in Philadelphia.  The younger Homer entered Princeton University in 1947, hoping to become a painter. Course taken with art history professors Albert M. Friend, Jr. (q.v.) and George Rowley (q.v.) convinced him to study art history.  He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1951. He continued for his master's degree in fine arts at Harvard University, marrying Virginia Doris Keller in 1954 (later divorced). Homer's 1961 Harvard dissertation was on Georges Seurat's color theories.  After gaining his Ph.D., he was briefly acting director the Princeton University art gallery (1956-1957) associate professor of Art & Archaeology, 1961-1964.  That year he published a re-written version of his dissertation as Seurat and the Science of Painting. Homer moved his research interest to Amercian art.  He was appointed associate professor at Cornell University, 1964-1966 before moving to the University of Delaware.  He remained at Delaware the rest of his career.  While researching his book on American artists, Homer became interested in photography.  This lead to his later interests in Stieglitz and a 1977 book on the American avant-garde.  He married for a second time to Christine Datri Hyer in 1986, University of Rochester gallery staff person. Homer was responsible for steering a major collection of African-American art collected by Paul R. Jones of Atlanta to the University of Delaware. In 1999, he issued his Language of Contemporary Criticism Clarified.

HCountry:  United States

HBiography: "Christine Hyer Weds William Homer. " New York Times, August 25, 1986, p. B7; "Homer's Odyssey." Princeton Alumni Weekly: PawPlus (website) www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/plus/plus_051006odyssey.html.

HBibliography: [dissertation:] Seurat's Theories of Color and Expression: their Origins and Application.  Harvard, 1961;  Seurat and the Science of Painting. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1964; and Organ, Violet.  Robert Henri and his Circle.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1969; Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-garde. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977; and Goodrich, Lloyd. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Painter of Dreams. New York: Abrams, 1989; Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art.  New York: Abbeville Press, 1992.