Tip: move over the painting to use the lens.
The Herring Net
Winslow Homer · 1885
- Artist
- Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
- Date
- 1885
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 76.5 × 122.9 cm (30 1/8 × 48 3/8 in.)
- Made in
- Prouts Neck
- Style
- Impressionism
- Where to see it
- Art Institute of Chicago
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · CC0 Public Domain · Art Institute of Chicago · image via Wikimedia Commons · see it at the museum ↗
Notes from the museum
Long inspired by the sea, Winslow Homer spent time in 1881 in a fishing community in Tynemouth, England. The experience fundamentally changed his life and work. His paintings thereafter focused almost exclusively on humankind’s age-old contest with nature. In The Herring Net , executed in Prouts Neck, Maine, Homer depicted the heroic efforts of fishermen at their daily work. In a small dory, one figure hauls in glistening herring, while the other, possibly a boy, unloads the catch. Laboring far from the schooners on the horizon, the pair strives to steady the precarious boat as it rides the incoming swells.
Text: Art Institute of Chicago (open access). Our full story for this work is coming soon.
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About Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art in general.
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