The Flirt

The Flirt belongs to Homer's genre subjects depicting the social interactions of young Americans in rural and resort settings, a mode he pursued extensively in the late 1860s and early 1870s before his focus shifted toward pure landscape. These subjects — young women and men at country resorts, farm girls in fields, boys and girls at play — drew on the tradition of English genre painting while reflecting specifically American social structures: the relative freedom of movement and social interaction available to middle-class American women compared to their European counterparts struck many observers of the period.

The flirtation subject requires Homer to manage the spatial and psychological relationship between two figures, using posture, gaze, and proximity to convey the dynamic. His handling of fashionable dress in these genre scenes shows the precision he brought from illustration — the cut of a jacket, the fall of a skirt — against more broadly painted landscape settings.