Shark Trivia

Did You Know that Sharks were painted by an artistic Homer….

.….in the famous painting The Gulf Stream, 1899, by Winslow Homer? For more than a decade, the artist was preoccupied with the power of the ocean and often made it the subject of his art.

The Gulf Stream is named after the strong Atlantic current that connected many of the locations where he enjoyed painting including his travels to the Bahamas.

In the painting, a man faces his demise on a dismasted, rudderless fishing boat, sustained by only a few stalks of sugarcane, all while being threatened by sharks and a distant waterspout. He is oblivious to the schooner on the left horizon, which Homer later added to the composition as a sign of hopeful rescue.

Painted just a year after the death of his father, the painting has been interpreted as an expression of the artist’s presumed sense of mortality and vulnerability.