Pull for the Shore

Pull for the Shore is a culmination of J.G. Brown's experience off the coast of Maine in the summer of 1877. The work embodies the ideals of bodily health and unified physical labor towards the accomplishment of larger communal goals, which he particularly admired in the fisherfolk on Grand Manan Island. Martha Hoppin explains, "Grand Manan's isolation and traditional way of life aroused his recording instincts. In painting the fish, boats, and clothes of the fishermen, Brown claimed he had done 'precisely what a good newspaper reporter would have done,' plus something more. 'Of course, I embellished my fishermen: I did not copy them as they stood before me as models. I put J.G. Brown into them.'" (as quoted in The World of J.G. Brown, Chesterfield, Massachusetts, 2010, p. 116)

An almost identical work by J.G. Brown is in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California. A larger version of this composition was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1878 and is currently in the collection of the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia.