The Herring Net

Title

The Herring Net

Artist

Eric Glaser

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

"The Herring Net"

Artist: Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910)

Title: The Herring Net

Object Type: Painting

Genre: Genre art

Date: 1885

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: Height: 76.5 cm (30.1 in); Width: 122.9 cm (48.3 in)

Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois USA

Current Location: Gallery 171

Object History: Charles W. Gould, New York, by 1908 to 1915; M. Knoedler and Company, New York, 1915; Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson, Chicago, 1915; given to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1937

Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

Inscriptions: Signature and date bottom right: Homer 85

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art.

Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations.

In 1883 Winslow Homer moved to the small coastal village of Prouts Neck, Maine, where he created a series of paintings of the sea unparalleled in American art. Long inspired by the subject, Homer had spent summers visiting New England fishing villages during the 1870s, and in 1881–82 he made a trip to a fishing community in Cullercoats, England, that fundamentally changed his work and his life. The paintings he created after 1882 focus almost exclusively on humankind’s age-old contest with nature.

Here Homer depicted the heroic efforts of fishermen at their daily work, hauling in an abundant catch of herring. In a small dory, two figures loom large against the mist on the horizon, through which the sails of the mother schooners are dimly visible. While one fisherman hauls in the netted and glistening herring, the other unloads the catch. Utilizing the teamwork so necessary for survival, both strive to steady the precarious boat as it rides the incoming swells. Homer’s isolation of these two figures underscores the monumentality of their task: the elemental struggle against a sea that both nurtures and deprives.

This is a Google Art Project image, thank you Google!

Text Credit: Google Arts & Culture, Art Institute of Chicago

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Additional image editing by Eric Glaser

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July 13th, 2020

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