Masterworks of American Art

This watercolor titled Looking Over the Cliffs was painted in 1882, during the period when Homer travelled abroad to England and lived for a year and a half in the village of Cullercoats, Northumberland, near the fishing port of Tynemouth on the stormy North Sea. Here his subjects were the sea and the hardy men and women who made their living on it. These fishwives were women who did men’s work in unloading the boats and mending nets, and in this watercolor, these women stand on the cliffs watching for the boats to return.