Unloading a Fishing Boat

On this stretch of the Dutch North Sea coast the fishing villages had no harbour. The flat-bottomed boats were run straight up onto the open beach and unloaded there by hand, and that is the moment Toorop painted in 1889. It is heavy, ordinary work, and he sets it down plainly, a crew, a boat and the day's catch, without turning the fishermen into either heroes or victims.