SCARBOROUGH – When winter came to the summer colony of Prouts Neck, a rocky point on the Atlantic, Winslow Homer welcomed the solitude. He retreated to his studio and, from his balcony, he studied the fickle weather and the crashing waves.

“Living at his studio allowed Homer to have a perpetual tete-a-tete with the ocean which beat up on the great ledges almost at his door,” Homer biographer William Downes wrote. “His moving there was to signal the creation of the most important sea pieces of his career.”

Several of those pieces now reside at the Portland Museum of Art; on Thursday, museum officials announced a two-year, $12 million capital campaign to acquire, preserve and create an endowment for the studio in which they were created.

“They own many Homers, and this seems to be a place where someone can study his work in depth,” Brad Willauer of Prouts Neck, brother of the studio’s current owner, Charles Homer Willauer, said by phone from Portland. “It’s very important that the studio be a part of Maine going forward. I think it’s important to be in the hands of a Maine institution and that it will be forever preserved.”

His family has kept the studio in pristine condition since the artist’s death there in 1910, and descendants have given private tours of the property for years. They never advertised, nor would you find the studio in any guidebooks, but they were happy to oblige the devoted few who made the effort to find it.

“We think it’s rather spectacular that the artist’s studio remains pretty much as it was when he left,” Brad Willauer said.

Discussions between the family and the museum have been in the works for the last six years, and Charles Homer Willauer, Homer’s great-grand-nephew, agreed to sell the property at “a considerable financial sacrifice,” according to Daniel O’Leary, the museum’s director.

“He’s making a very major contribution,” O’Leary said. “He is one of the leading donors to make this possible.”

Charles Willauer, who is now in his 60s, has owned the studio since he was a boy. Though he was unavailable for comment, brother Brad said the family wanted to ensure that the studio and its contents would be properly preserved and curated over many decades to come. Rather than ask the family to continue the task, they turned to the Portland Museum of Art, which boasts one of the largest collections of Homer’s works in the United States.

In 1893, the artist exhibited his painting “Signal of Distress” there. And in 1976, philanthropist Charles Shipman Payson gave the museum four oils and 13 watercolors painted by Homer. The museum also holds his first oil painting, “Sharpshooter,” and an extensive collection of his early work as a commercial illustrator.

The studio, which was originally built as a carriage house on family property, will be an invaluable addition to the museum’s collection.

The acquisition will “allow us to do school programs that we think will be quite outstanding,” O’Leary said, including studies of the artist in the classroom, trips to the museum to see Homer’s work and then small group visits to the studio.

“They’ll get to see Homer’s studio, where he painted,” O’Leary said. “We want generations of young people to realize the uniqueness of Maine’s artistic heritage.”

Museum officials want to expose audiences of all ages to Homer’s work through a study center and limited visits during the “shoulder seasons.” Due to the nature of the property and the exclusive neighborhood in which it sits, large tours aren’t an option, even when the preservation project is completed in two years. And Homer, an intensely private, independent man, probably would’ve wanted it that way.

“We will continue the tradition of protecting it and sharing it in a careful way,” O’Leary said.

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.