Then Winslow Homer produced a pad of paper and ... alternately obliterated by the lashing sea." Homer disappeared with his sketches, returned to his studio in the fishing village of Cullercoats ...

So much that there is little time left to share with a wife," Beam wrote in Winslow Homer at Prout's Neck (1966). The truth, it seems, remains as stubbornly elusive as the artist himself.