The New York Times ran an interesting story about Winslow Homer’s home on Prouts Neck in Maine which has been sold to the Portland Museum of Art and will be turned into a semi-public place were visitors can see the views Homer worked from. The Times has a great interactive map where one can compare the paintings with photographs of the views:

Three years ago, Charles Homer Willauer, who had inherited his great-great-uncle’s studio, sold it to the Portland Museum of Art for nearly $1.9 million. The museum is deep into a renovation it hopes to complete by 2012. While the studio is on a private road, it will be open to small groups by special arrangement after the work is finished.

Once visitors have access to the studio, they will be able to look from its balcony and see, off to the right, the house, now remodeled, that once belonged to the artist’s father, Charles Homer Sr., and later to Charles Jr. and Homer’s beloved sister-in-law Mattie.

“Nowhere else is there so rich a spectrum of an artist’s chosen subject matter,” said Daniel O’Leary, a former director of the Portland Museum of Art and the studio project. “There is no place like it in America because no where else can you see a great American artist’s inspiration take shape and observe the actual views that he enriches and preserves. At no other single spot can you see 15 or 16 views that inspired great paintings.”

Winslow Homer’s Maine (New York Times)