The Fishnet

Neither the gallery nor the catalogue records give this picture a year, which for a painter who turned out harbour scenes steadily is normal enough. The shape is the unusual thing. The canvas is an oval, a format the 19th century kept for pictures meant to hang in a private drawing room, and the composition is built into the curve. The mast reaches the top of it, the hull sits low, and the line of cork floats runs out of the boat towards the bottom edge, where gulls are dropping onto the water. Four or five men are crowded into the stern, working the net over the side. Behind them a bare rock lifts out of the haze with a second sailing boat lying under it.