Boats Alongside a Schooner (Fishing Pinky)

Boats Alongside a Schooner is one of a series of nine highly-finished charcoals of fishermen executed in 1884 by Winslow Homer. Related works include Schooner at Anchor (The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts); A Haul of Herring (Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts); Mackerel Fishing (Promised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas); Study for ‘The Herring Net’ (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York); Passing A Wreck—Mid-Ocean and A Fishing Schooner (both, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine).

In the early 1880s, Homer spent time abroad in the fishing village of Tynemouth, England, where his work began to focus on the ominous ocean waters and the hardworking fisherfolk who lived there. Upon his return home in 1883, the artist quickly left New York City and settled permanently along the dramatic, rocky coast of Prout's Neck, Maine. The environment proved to be the perfect setting to continue his artistic explorations of the man versus sea motif. Indeed, the area’s rough waters teamed with fishermen, and a particularly good season for herring fishing in 1884 likely inspired the series including the present work. Philip C. Beam writes, “in 1884, the year after Homer arrived, a great school of herring came in by Stratton’s Island, opposite Prout’s, and attracted a huge fishing fleet. [Roswell] Googins, then a boy of thirteen, rowed Homer out to the fleet and waited until nearly nightfall for him to make sketch after sketch of the men and the boats…The men fished from dories with gill nets…It was an old-time method, unsuited to mass hauls, and is little seen today.” (Winslow Homer at Prout’s Neck, Lanham, Maryland, 1966, pp. 66, 68)

Boats Alongside a Schooner captures Homer’s absolute fascination with and reverence for the hard work of these fishermen as they haul heavy nets into dinghies and onto their larger ‘Pinky’ type fishing craft. The gestural marks of charcoal and chalk create a palpable sense of movement within the work, as the emotive positioning of each straining sailor reflects their tireless efforts. As a contemporary reviewer wrote of another work in the series, “There is no detail, no facial expression, and yet the varying emotions of the sailors and the general effect of the incident are perfectly rendered.” (as quoted in L. Goodrich, A.B. Gerdts, Record of Works by Winslow Homer: 1883 through 1889, vol. IV.2, New York, 2012, p. 282)