Snap the Whip

Barefoot schoolboys, hands locked in a line, play crack-the-whip in a sunlit meadow beside a little red schoolhouse, the end of the chain flung stumbling across the grass. Winslow Homer captures the careless energy of boyhood in bright, clear light and lively movement. Now in the Metropolitan Museum, Snap the Whip became a beloved emblem of rural American childhood - painted just after the Civil War, it carries a note of nostalgia for simpler, country values, the whole game a small, sunny image of youth, play, and the fragile chain of community.