Winslow Homer’s The Fisher Girl

Winslow Homer, The Fisher Girl, 1894, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 x 3 ⅞ in., Mead Art Museum. 

Introduction

Winslow Homer’s The Fisher Girl is a synthesis of turning points, representing new perspectives in Homer’s choice of subject matter, his subject’s reaction to the overbearing fog partially concealing her, and his artistic style. This oil painting was created in 1894 in Prout’s Neck, Maine: Homer’s main residence following his departure from Cullercoats, England. This physical relocation also coincided with a major shift in Homer’s choice of figure. As Lloyd Goodrich illustrates, “in his figure paintings of the middle and late 1890s, women appeared only rarely, and these few were no longer the elegant young ladies of earlier years.”¹ Due to Cullercoats and Prout’s Neck’s close proximity to the harbor, fishing girls and fishermen became frequent figures illustrated in Homer’s works, creating an emphasis on the sturdy, working-class of fisherfolk. The Fisher Girl depicts a girl surrounded by rain, wind, and miscellaneous weather phenomena, longingly gazing toward the horizon over the sea. She is carrying a fishing net, yet still stands tall, unaffected by the weather and the weight that burdens her. This object represents a storm in its entirety, characterized by all-consuming rain, suggested wind, and an abundance of fog. Apart from the central figure, rendered in detailed brush strokes and warm colors, the rest of the painting uses obscured, wide brush strokes and cool melding of color. Both the juxtaposition between the difference in brush strokes and the temperature of color exemplify the relationship between personhood and weather, as evidenced by the figure in the center of the storm. Prior to this work, Homer was regarded as a renowned watercolor painter, illustrated in the thin wash of gray paint spread throughout the object. The Fisher Girl also depicts a hallmark of Homer’s future works: bold seascapes.² Through an amalgamation of painting techniques with subject matter and setting choice, Homer creates a work that empowers the woman pictured. The clarity of detail in which she is painted, coupled with her presence as a working individual, braving a storm, captures the audience with virtually no hesitation. The Fisher Girl manages to defeat each dauntless task it attempts again and again, cementing the work as one to be reckoned with. 

Winslow Homer, The Fisher Girl, 1894, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 x 3 ⅞ in., Mead Art Museum. 

Physical Details from Close Observation:

Winslow Homer’s The Fisher Girl depicts a young woman standing on a beach in the midst of a foggy seascape, a depiction that Homer himself remarks as “the best single figure that I remember having painted.”³ This is a square artwork about 40 inches x 40 inches (with the frame; the canvas is about 28 in x 28 in) of oil paint on canvas. The figure physically takes up most of the work, with her stature directly centered and spanning most of the painting’s vertical length. She stands with her right foot slightly ahead of her left, and her body faces toward the left side of the work. Her face is gazing toward the left portion of the painting with a determined expression, with her right hand shading and focusing her eyes. She holds a large fishing net draped over her left shoulder, and is wearing a long, brown, simple dress, and sturdy black boots; her hair is pulled back in a bun, suggesting that she is a member of the working class. She is expertly drawn—her facial expression mirrors the chiseled qualities of an Ancient Greek marble statue and Homer paints the shadows on her face and arms to look lifelike. The foggy area surrounding the figure is characterized by its profusion of colors and wide brushstrokes. Specifically, Homer lays several pure white strokes of paint on the middle of the far left side of the painting. Between these bold lines of white paint and a bright dash of turquoise directly in their center, Homer creates the illusion of an ocean. The entire work is covered in a gray wash, proposing the existence of severe fog. When looking closely at the work, the viewer is able to look past the gray wash and see virtually every color of the rainbow. A representation of a bird is suggested by two white lines in the upper right-hand corner of the work, and the lower right-hand corner shows a scraggly, dead bush with red berries, partially obscured by the gray wash of fog. The lower portion of the figure is also covered by the fog, although her upper half is significantly clearer and brighter. The figure is painted with warm colors of pinks, browns, and reds, while her surroundings are painted with cool-toned colors of grays, stark whites, and turquoises, creating a sharp juxtaposition of identifiable forms and lost forms. Still, both aspects of the work contain references to their counterpart, with red berries and earth visible beneath the gray fog and cool shadows and fog dispersed across the figure. 

Discussion of the Figure:

Throughout his lifetime, Homer was fascinated by almost contradictory subjects, beginning his career with depictions of dainty women and inhabited areas, and finalizing his repertoire with bold, wild seascapes. In the midst of these two extremes lies The Fisher Girl, a melding of a female protagonist and a ferocious atmosphere. In 1881, Homer moved to Cullercoats, England, “a fishing village and artists’ colony,” where he “devoted himself almost entirely to watercolour painting. There, he spent his time mastering a range of academic techniques and making scores of pictures of the fisherfolk,” exhibiting a stark contrast from much of his earlier work.⁴ After a year’s stay, Homer relocated to Prout’s Neck, Maine, where “his centre of interest shifted from inhabited to wild nature—to the sea and the wilderness, and the men who were part of them,” illustrated in his more famous works like The Fog Warning and The Herring Net.⁵ Both works identify men grappling with the tempestuous nature of the ocean, depicted with brawny and rugged undertones, contrasting the typical femininity associated with water. Art historian Christopher Reed argues that “from Classical mythology to the psychoanalytic theories of Carl Jung, patriarchy has troped the feminine with the sea as twin embodiments of something man cannot master,” a phenomenon that Homer intentionally challenges as he “underlines his construction of the female/sea as Other by contrasting it explicitly with its opposite: man and land,” acting as a “conceptual foil to his maritime imagery.”⁶ Homer’s various depictions of men exploring mountainous regions, coupled with his other representations of women enduring sea life, creates an intriguing dichotomy that forces the audience to consider their relationship with gender norms and the natural world. While the depicted men appear to be controlling the Earth, tackling the atmosphere to their whims, most of his women illustrated exist at the mercy of the sea, forever impacted by the unpredictability of its nature. Homer’s depictions of men among the ocean call into question man’s ability to conquer its body; many of his similar representations of women conversely illuminate a state of prey. In works such as The Life Line (1884) and Undertow (1886), the female figures are displayed as unconscious, hindered by their soaked clothing. However, The Fisher Girl depicts the primary figure standing with a sense of intensity, braving the surrounding weather as the fog attempts to conceal her. Whereas her female companions are observed as extreme kin to the sea, almost morphing into its body through an absence of consciousness, this protagonist withstands the atmosphere’s attempts to take her form. 

Discussion of the Weather:

Throughout his body of work, Homer regularly pairs depictions of the sea with tumultuous weather events and various individuals. In The Fisher Girl, the main figure is illustrated amongst a mass of fog, demonstrating a tension between a vulnerable man and the uncompromising natural world. The fog heavily shrouds the surrounding atmosphere, yet leaves the woman relatively untouched, except for the tendrils creeping up her bottom half. Although not unusual for Maine weather, the fog chronicles the moment pictured as ominous or foreboding, causing the reader to wonder about the figure’s place within the potentially sinister landscape. Homer renders the work with an intentional muddling of the sea, land, and sky, clearly separating the fisher girl from her surroundings and creating a feeling categorized by the work’s hazy atmosphere. Furthermore, Homer paints the woman with warm, detailed brush strokes, again separating the figure from the landscape’s cool, homogenous tone. He uses fog’s typical qualities of being cold and overbearing (both in color and emotion) and intentionally depicts his figure with distinctly opposite features. As a result, the woman appears increasingly defiant against the weather, attempting to thwart her view, cementing her characterization as stalwart fisherfolk. In conversation with Homer’s more famous rugged male and dainty female subjects, his depiction of The Fisher Girl subverts these stereotypes through withstanding a weathering of fog. Although the figure seems to be the sole subject of the work, a closer look illuminates the fog as a driving force in the painting’s resistant tone.

Footnotes

1. Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944), 145. ↩︎
2. Emily Mackey, “The Fisher Girl,” 2010, Mead Art Museum, https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+P.1933.7.  ↩︎
3. Winslow Homer to Mr. Burton Mansfield, August 17, 1904, Mead Art Museum, https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+P.1933.7. ↩︎
4. Helen A. Cooper, “Homer, Winslow,” Grove Art Online, 2003, accessed March 13, 2025, https://www-oxfordartonline-com.amherst.idm.oclc.org/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000038730. ↩︎
5. Cooper, “Homer.” ↩︎
6. Christopher Reed, “The Artist and the Other: The Work of Winslow Homer,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1989), 70.  ↩︎