Shark Fishing

This artwork from 1885 came at a time when Winslow Homer was starting to really focus on his seascape paintings. This lesser known piece was completed using watercolours and is likely to reside today within a private collection.

Here we find a frightening image of a shark wrestling with its captors who sit on a small fishing boat. It seems a close battle between the large fish and the physically well-built fisherman. Homer deliberately reduces the size of the boat in order to balance up this fight. He would regularly depict man versus nature within his paintings, be it oils or watercolours. He most likely would have drawn out the main forms for this piece with a graphite pencil before adding the watercolour tones over the top. He went through a period of finding it hard to sell his oil paintings and that was part of the reason for why he specialised in watercolours for a period. He also found this medium to be easily portable, allowing him to work outdoors when normally his oil pieces would be constructed within his studio. We can see from the original pencil marks as to how he planned this piece.

The sky is devoid of pencil marks, carrying only the light tones of watercolour, suggesting that he left this region entirely free of planning and just allowed his imagination to take over. Homer would have produced so many skies by this point in his career that he would not have needed to think consciously about it. The human figures plus the shark, though, needed more consideration because of how mistakes could easily be identified by the viewer and also they sat in the focal point of the painting. The shark itself has its mouth open, underlining the danger that it poses to the fishermen as it struggles and wrestles in the sea. The artist adds tones of white over the sea in order to create a feeling of activity and this battle continues. Fishing would appear in several artworks by Homer, and was a key feature of life on the waves. He also produced many other artworks from the shore in various locations of the US and also abroad.

The artist would capture the good and bad of life by the sea towards the end of the 19th century. There would be romantic views across the water from love-struck couples, but also the tragedies of shipwrecks and hurricanes. Shark Fishing could well have been completed in just a few hours, when considering the way in which watercolours are applied and also the relative simplicity of this piece. The main detail included here was applied to the fisherman nearest us, as well as to the side of the boat. It is a highly impactful piece but for some reason is not one of his most famous, perhaps due to its inclusion within a private collection that might have reduced its exposure to the public over the past century. It perfectly captures the essence of Winslow Homer, particularly in the latter half of his career.