Winslow Homer
1899

Back in Prouts Neck, Maine, after one of his winter
visits to the Bahamas, Homer painted this narrative
if imminent disaster. A man faces his demise on a
dismasted, rudderless fishing boat, sustained by
sharks and a distant waterspout. He is oblivious to
the ship on the left horizon, which Homer added as
a sign of hope after he initially exhibited the
canvas. Some art historians have read the painting
as a symbolic, connecting it, for example, with
the period's racial tensions and Homer's presumed sense
of mortality and vulnerability the year after his father's
death.

from: The Met