Artwork · 19th century · Winslow Homer

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The Herring Net

Winslow Homer1885Oil on canvas76.5 × 122.9 cm

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At a glance

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Two fishermen in a small dory haul in a net heavy with herring, out on rough water.
Winslow Homer painted it in 1885 at Prouts Neck, on the coast of Maine.
In all that gray fog and dark sea, only the silver fish shine, so your eye goes straight to the catch.

Reading the picture

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Zoom in on the net at the lower right. Herring hang from the mesh, caught by their heads. Their backs are bluish and their bellies flash white. Homer touched each gill with a stroke of red, so the fish look as if they just came out of the water.
Look at the fisherman standing in the middle of the boat. He bends low and grips the net in his fist. Next to his hands hangs a round float that keeps the net up in the water. His face is lost in the shadow of his hat, so we never learn who he is.
Zoom in on the figure sitting at the left. His broad-brimmed waterproof hat gleams where the light hits it. Thick strokes of pale paint run over the oilskin on his shoulders. The Art Institute of Chicago suggests this may be a boy. He is busy unloading the catch into the boat.
Look at the waves at the bottom center. A red buoy shaped like a small keg floats half under water. A single dab of white on top makes the wet surface seem to shine. It is the warmest color in the whole gray sea.
Zoom in near the horizon on the left. A sailing vessel stands faintly in the fog. Farther off on the right you can just make out more sails. The big ships are far away, and only this one small boat rides in the middle of the swells.

When it was painted

In 1885 Homer was forty-nine. Two years earlier, in 1883, he had left New York and settled at Prouts Neck, a stretch of coast in Maine. His family had bought land there, and he lived and worked in a studio looking out over the ocean.

His turn toward the sea had begun a little before that. In 1881 Homer crossed to England and stayed into the next year in a fishing village near Tynemouth, on the northeast coast. Day after day he watched fishermen head out onto the North Sea and their families wait for them on shore. The Art Institute of Chicago describes that stay as something that changed his life and work at the root.

Back in America, his paintings turned almost entirely to people pitted against the sea. In The Fog Warning, also painted in 1885, a lone fisherman in a dory glances back at a distant ship as a fog bank rolls in. The two pictures are often discussed together as Homer's fishermen paintings of these years.

The Herring Net hung in the autumn exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York the year it was painted. In 1893 it went to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Martin A. Ryerson and his wife, collectors in Chicago, bought it in 1915. It came to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1937 as part of the Ryerson collection.

Look again at the net at the lower right. Of everything in this sea, the brightest paint went to the fish the two men are pulling up.

The painter

Winslow Homer

1836–1910

When painting this, the artist was about 49 years old

All paintings by Winslow Homer →

More by the same painter

Croquet Scene1866

Fire-Works on the Night of the Fourth of July (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. XII)July 11, 1868

Hidden stories in this painting

What is hiding in the fog behind The Herring Net?The shining fish grab your eye first. But at both edges of the painting, faint shapes are waiting in the fog.

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you see either fisherman's face? How did Homer keep them hidden?
Why?Why do you think Homer let the big ships fade into the fog?
What about you?The fish we eat today was also hauled out of the sea by someone, often in dangerous conditions. How much do we really know about that work, and do we pay a fair price for it?

Same period