The First of the Herring
Medium
Photoetching, pl. XXVII from the album "Wild Life on a Tidal Water: The Adventures of a House-Boat and Her Crew" (1890)
Dimensions
Image: 9 × 14.8 cm (3 9/16 × 5 7/8 in.); Paper: 25 × 30 cm (9 7/8 × 11 13/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
229759
Art Historical Context
Peter Henry Emerson's *The First of the Herring (1887), a photoetching from his 1890 album *Wild Life on a Tidal Water The Adventures of a Houseat and Her Crew*, the raw energy of coastal life on England's Norfolk Broads. Emerson, a pioneering British photographer, documented the daily rhythms of fishermen and houseboat dwellers, blending adventure narrative with vivid imagery. This intimate plate (XXVII), measuring just 9 × 14.8 cm on a larger 25 × 30 cm sheet, likely depicts the triumphant moment of a fresh herring catch, evoking the seasonal herring fishery that sustained local communities....
About the Artist
Peter Henry Emerson · 1856–1936
Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936) was born on May 13 at his family's sugar plantation, La Palma Estate, near Encrucijada, Cuba, to an American father, Henry Ezekiel Emerson, and British mother, Jane Harris Billing. A distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Morse, he spent his early childhood amid the island's landscapes before moving to Wilmington, Delaware, during the American Civil War ...