Netting the Fish (1889): Artwork and History

Netting the Fish (1889) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Winslow Homer American, 1836-1910.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

An avid angler and sportsman, Homer often depicted fishing and hunting scenes in his artwork. Many of his watercolors that explore these subjects were painted on frequent trips to the Adirondack Mountains. Netting the Fish is unusual in its focus on a gentleman sportsman. Young, well groomed, and neatly attired, the fisherman in this watercolor stands in contrast to the rustic guides featured in many of the artist’s other Adirondacks works. Homer’s fluid brushstrokes describe the smooth surface of the water, and his background washes evoke the wooded shoreline seen at a distance. Netting the Fish is one of Homer’s few grisaille, or monochrome, watercolors, painted as a study of values in preparation for the etching Fly Fishing, Saranac Lake.

Object facts

• Title: Netting the Fish
• Date: 1889
• Artist attribution: Winslow Homer American, 1836-1910
• Place of origin: United States
• Medium: Transparent watercolor, heightened with opaque white watercolor, with rewetting, blotting, and scraping, over graphite, on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper
• Dimensions: 35.3 × 50.8 cm (13 15/16 × 20 in.)
• Type: Drawing and Watercolor
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1933.526

Collection credit

Olivia Shaler Swan Memorial Collection

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.