Fisherman and Girl in a Rowboat Streaked Red, White and Blue

This painting references the working people Winslow Homer saw on a daily basis on the East Coast. His attention to detail in this watercolor is impeccable, enticing the viewer to take a deeper look at the scene he has depicted.

Homer is known to have painted ​en plein air (in open air, or outside), and the view in front of him would have often included boats, fishermen and women at work. His works capture the dignity and power of working people. In this painting, the boat and figures are clouded with mist, as they would be when going out early in the morning to fish. The fisherman's face is turned away from the viewers, as he is rowing the rowboat, while the woman looks onward into the distance. The sleeves of her blue dress are rolled up to her elbow, indicating her involvement with the work on the boat.

Charles and Sarah Allis purchased this painting from the Macbeth Gallery in New York City in 1912.

Winslow Homer (American) is considered by many to be one of the greatest American artists of the late nineteenth century. He is known particularly for his love of the sea, the realism of his works, and for his versatility as an artist.

Beginning his career in Boston, Massachusetts — where he worked for a newspaper as a lithographer (a printmaker whose methods involve using heavy stones to press the plate and paper together) — Homer also worked for Harper's Weekly in New York, which sent him to the front lines of the Civil War to sketch soldiers and battles for publication in the magazine.

Following the war, his art included studies of women at work and children at play. He spent more than a year in England in the early 1880s, living in a small town on the North Sea; there he was able to observe firsthand the work of the townsfolk as they waited for the men to return from fishing. Upon his return to the United States, he moved from New York to Prouts Neck, Maine, where he lived until his death in 1910. His art reflected his passion for the sea in all its drama and wildness. His seascapes remain the most admired of his works.

Photography by Kevin Miyazaki.