Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Gale
Winslow Homer American
Not on view
The Gale is Homer’s culminating image of Cullercoats fisherwomen. He radically reworked the composition over the course of a decade to clarify the subject as a vigorous depiction of the heroic strength of women against the elements—a counterpoint to his many oils of men engaged in timeless struggle. In an earlier version of the painting, which was roundly denounced by critics on its exhibition at New York’s National Academy of Design, the woman and child were just one element of a scene that included Cullercoats’ Life Brigade House, men in foul-weather gear, and a sizable boat. When the repainted work was exhibited in 1893, only the main figural group (which he had transported from England to the coast of Prouts Neck, Maine) remained.
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