From a rocky shoreline, we look on several light-skinned people working by the sea with a boat and a net in this freely painted, almost square seascape. The scene is framed by a silhouette of low boulders along the lower right corner, and a towering cream-white rock rising two-thirds of the way up the composition to our left. Scrubby, celery-green vegetation grows on the rocky outcropping. Near the center, close to the towering white rocks, three people sit, reaching for something near one end of a boat while a fourth person braces against the rock, presumably to push the boat out to the…
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Seashore with Fishermen

Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727 - 1788)

c. 1781/1782

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 101.9 x 127.6 cm (40 1/8 x 50 1/4 in.) ; framed: 124.5 x 149.9 x 7 cm (49 x 59 x 2 3/4 in.)
Culture
British
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, 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 National Gallery of Art