The Herring Net
Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
1885
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 76.5 × 122.9 cm (30 1/8 × 48 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Prouts Neck
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
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.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
