|
Toward the end of his career, when he painted The
Herring Net, Winslow Homer was interested in exploring the relationship
between man and nature. Here, two anonymous fisherman struggle to pull
a net of herring into their small boat as it is tossed among the waves
of the Atlantic Ocean.
With their obscured facial features and large hats, the fisherman do
not represent specific individuals, but rather humanity in general.
Homer completed The Herring Net following an 1881 trip to the
village of Tynemouth,
England, on the North
Sea, where he observed the harsh lives of fishermen and
their wives.
Homer's style
in this painting represents a dramatic change from his earlier works
such as Croquet Scene. No longer
is nature peaceful and sunny; instead it is dark and tumultuous. In
place of the playful camaraderie, there is a feeling of isolation as
the fisherman's boat is far away from the schooners
in the background. Homer indicated the physical exertion required by
placing the young boy's body over the side of the boat to counterbalance
the weight of the fish being pulled up in the net.
Homer moved from New
York to Prout's
Neck, on the coast of Maine, in 1884. He claimed to have
witnessed the harvesting of a large school of herring that year, sketching
the fishermen from a boat that he hired. This attention to contemporary
life is a hallmark of Homer's work, yet here, a contemporary event becomes
a metaphor for the human struggle against nature.
|
 |
| Croquet Scene, 1866 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 40.3 x 66.2 cm |
| Friends of American Art Collection, 1942.35 |
View
enlargement
|
|
|
Homer, who worked as a reporter/illustrator during the Civil
War, also painted themes of upper-class leisure in post-Civil
War America. This genre
painting depicts three women and a man playing croquet
on a lawn, probably in New York's Central Park. Croquet, recently
introduced into the United States, was socially acceptable for
women and men to play together during the conservative postwar
era. Homer's attention to the effects of open-air sunlight and
his decision to depict leisure activities of the fashionable middle-class
recall the subjects of French Impressionism,
which he would have seen during a trip to Paris in 1866-67.
|
|
