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What is happening in Winslow Homer’s Fog Warning?
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Winslow Homer
Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), oil on canvas by Winslow Homer, 1873–76; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 61.5 × 97 cm.
In Winslow Homer’s 1885 painting Fog Warning, a lone fisherman is depicted in a dory as night falls and fog begins to roll in. The scene captures a moment of intense human struggle against the elements, as the fisherman must calculate the distance and the time he has remaining to safely return to his home ship.1
This work is part of a series of monumental narrative paintings from the mid-1880s in which Homer explored the theme of heroic individuals pitting their strength, intelligence, and experience against the power of the sea.1