Fishermen in Painting: 12 Famous Works
Famous fishermen paintings are almost never about fish. They are about waiting, weather and who comes back. Twelve canvases, including the one Winslow Homer changed after critics complained the boat’s fate was too cruel, and the barge haulers who made a tsar uncomfortable.
Before the tide turns
One painter altered a famous canvas because viewers could not bear the ending he implied.
One picture of men hauling a barge embarrassed the Russian court so much it was nearly hidden.
One fishing scene contains the first great group portrait of ordinary workers in Spain.
Christ recruited fishermen, which gave religious painters an excuse to paint boats for 500 years.
And one storm at sea has been missing since 1990.
1 | The Fog Warning, Winslow Homer (1885)
A lone dory fisherman with two halibut aboard turns to look at a bank of fog rolling between him and his schooner. The whole story is in his head turn.
Homer moved to the Maine coast to paint men who worked the water. He is in my guide to Winslow Homer.
2 | The Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer (1899)
A Black sailor lies on a dismasted boat, sharks circling, a waterspout behind, a distant ship that has not seen him. Viewers wrote to Homer demanding to know what happened.
He was irritated enough to reply that the man was eventually rescued, and later added a faint ship on the horizon to soften the verdict.
3 | Barge Haulers on the Volga, Ilya Repin (1873)
Eleven men in harness drag a barge upriver, ropes cutting into their chests, a boy in the middle lifting his head.
Repin spent summers living among them to get it right. The painting embarrassed the imperial court and made him famous across Europe: Ilya Repin.
4 | Sad Inheritance, Joaquin Sorolla (1899)
Disabled children bathe in the Valencia surf under a monk’s supervision, painted in blinding Mediterranean light that refuses to be sad on command.
It won the grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition. The painter of Spanish sunlight is in my guide to Joaquin Sorolla.
5 | The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, Duccio (about 1310)
Two brothers stand in a small boat with a net full of fish while Christ calls them from the shore. The fish are painted individually, each one a different species.
Painters got 500 years of boats out of this one Gospel scene, and the earliest versions are the most literal about the job being left behind.
6 | The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt (1633)
Fourteen figures fight a wave that has torn the sail. One of them, holding his cap and staring out at us, is Rembrandt himself.
It was stolen from the Gardner Museum in 1990 and has never been found. The full crime is in the most stolen paintings in history.
7 | The Boat, Gustave Caillebotte (1870s)
Caillebotte painted rowers and anglers from inside the boat, cropping arms and oars like a photograph taken by someone sitting in the stern.
He was a competitive sailor who designed his own yachts. He is in my guide to Gustave Caillebotte.
8 | Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes Maries, Vincent van Gogh (1888)
Van Gogh walked 40 kilometers to the Mediterranean, drew four boats on the sand in the morning, and painted them back in Arles from the drawing.
He copied the names painted on their bows, Amitie among them. He is in my guide to Vincent van Gogh.
9 | The Calling of Saint Matthew and the fishermen models, Caravaggio
Caravaggio pulled his apostles off the street: dockworkers, porters and boatmen, with dirt under the nails and sunburnt necks.
Church patrons complained the saints looked like laborers. That was the argument he kept winning: Caravaggio.
10 | Fishermen at Sea, JMW Turner (1796)
Turner’s first exhibited oil painting: a small boat lit by a lantern under a full moon, riding a swell near the Needles.
He was 21. A critic wrote that the artist would go far. He went further than that: JMW Turner.
11 | The Herring Net, Winslow Homer (1885)
Two men haul a net of silver herring over the gunwale in heavy grey swell, close enough that you cannot see the horizon past them.
Homer painted no drama here at all: just weight, wet rope and the work of the arms. The Art Institute of Chicago owns it.
12 | Christ in the Storm, Ludolf Bakhuizen (1695)
The Dutch specialist of shipwrecks reportedly paid fishermen to row him out into gales so he could sketch waves from inside them.
Marine painting in Holland was a technical trade: buyers knew rigging and would notice a wrong sail. More of that sea is in famous sea paintings and famous storm paintings.
The Met keeps the Gulf Stream itself, and its Winslow Homer collection runs to hundreds of works. The Rijksmuseum covers the Dutch marine trade.
Fishermen on canvas, quick answers
What is the most famous fishing painting? Homer’s Gulf Stream and Fog Warning, with Repin’s Barge Haulers as the great picture of river labor.
Did Homer really change The Gulf Stream? He added a distant ship after viewers pressed him about the sailor’s fate, and told his dealer the man was rescued.
Why do so many religious paintings show fishermen? Christ called his first apostles from fishing boats, which handed painters a legitimate excuse for boats, nets and weather.
Which fishing painting is missing? Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990.
Where can I see these works? Boston for the Fog Warning, the Met for the Gulf Stream, the Tretyakov for Repin, Tate for early Turner.
One closing fact: Homer built a studio on a rock ledge at Prouts Neck with a balcony hanging over the Atlantic, so he could watch storms arrive without leaving his easel.