The Herring Net

summer 1883

Moves to Prouts Neck

In the summer of 1883 Homer moved from New York to Prouts Neck, a peninsula ten miles south of Portland, Maine, and lived there for the rest of his life, using solitude to work. He settled on the family estate, in a remodelled carriage house seventy-five feet from the ocean.

1884

Death of his mother

In 1884 Homer's mother died: his first teacher and the strongest influence on him. After her death he became a “parent” to his ageing but domineering father, and his sister-in-law Martha (“Mattie”) became his closest female intimate.

winter 1884 – 1885

Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas

In the winter of 1884–1885 Homer travelled to Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas, painting a series of watercolours commissioned by Century Magazine: the storm-tossed green sea of Prouts Neck gave way to the sparkling blue skies of the Caribbean, and for Edith Blake, wife of the governor of the Bahamas, he painted “Children Under a Palm Tree”. “A Garden in Nassau” (1885) is one of the best of these watercolours, but they proved too advanced for traditional buyers.