MENDING THE NETS
by Winslow Homer
(1882)

     In 1881 Homer went to England, where he spent about two years sketching and painting in Tynemouth, a remote fishing port on the North Sea.
      Here, at the age of 45, his period of greatest artistic growth began. He was intrigued by the life of the hardy fisherfolk of Tynemouth, who struggled against the sea to earn their livelihood, but he did not paint that struggle directly.
      He depicted instead the robust and courageous women of Tynemouth, who mended the nets, kept house, and waited for their men to return from the sea.
      The English coastal atmosphere posed a new and difficult artistic challenge, but Homer mastered the diffused light, limited in color but infinitely varied in tone, in a series of subtle watercolors.
      Homer returned to America in 1883 and the sea became the dominant theme in his work.