Winslow Homer was the most down-to-earth visual interpreter of American life in the 19th century. During the Civil War, he was sent to the front as an artist-correspondent for Harper's magazine, and his sketches of battle scenes gave readers a close-up view of Americans at war. In the 1870s, Homer depicted a variety of subjects, but his favorite themes were rural settings that included children playing in the out-of-doors. He recorded them in a realistic manner, without the sentimentality that was so prevalent in the work of his contemporaries.

Homer spent the summer of 1873 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he painted The Boat Builders, which belongs to a series of prints and drawings devoted to shipbuilding. His genius for subtle yet penetrating narrative is apparent in the central passage of this small canvas: by overlapping the toy boat and the sailing ship, the artist connects the real world of fishermen with the boys' imagination. The juxtaposition also predicts the future of these Cape Ann youths, who will likely make their living from the sea. The painting conveys a sense of deep peace as the boys play quietly in the brilliant sunlight. A celebrated magazine illustrator, Homer also used this image of two boys in an engraving for the Harper's Weekly of October 11, 1873.

[Homer's] art is the world as a boy sees it . . . with delights to be explored, such as we remember from our own young days.
-Art historian Lloyd Goodrich, 1973