Skating on the Ladies' Skating Pond in Central Park, New York (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. IV) 1860

Winslow Homer’s *Skating on the Ladies' Skating Pond in Central Park, New York*, was made for *Harper’s Weekly*, a popular magazine of the time. It’s a wood engraving, meaning an image carved into a block of wood, inked, and then printed on paper. The process is fascinating: an artist would draw the image, and then a skilled artisan, or team of artisans, would painstakingly cut away the areas that should remain white. This was highly specialized labor. Look closely and you can see the many fine lines that make up the image. These lines create texture and shading, giving depth to the scene. Wood engraving was a key technology for mass media in the 19th century. It allowed images to be reproduced quickly and cheaply, bringing news and entertainment to a wide audience. Homer's image captures a leisure activity of the rising middle class. The print itself, however, was only made possible by the work of skilled craftspeople, whose names are now mostly lost to history.