On a Boat

Fishermen – depicted while at work or dining – are a frequent motif in Gottlieb’s creative output produced in the 1920s, both in his works on paper and oils. The paintings (as his monographer Artur Tanikowski points out) form an informal cycle also at the narrative level, representing the scenes of leaving the port, fishing, returning from the sea, preparing fish and sharing a meal.

The 1919 piece Cleaning Fish at the Institution for the Blind in Toledo could be seen as the beginning of the series, it is also clearly a continuation of the New Testament themes in the artist’s oeuvre. Formal features and the landscape visible in the background suggest that this work could possibly date from 1926 – the year Gottlieb visited Collioure, a port town with raw architecture at the foot of the French Pyrenees, a situation that makes it uniquely picturesque; this period witnesses the creation of Fishermen’s Supper, Storm (Oarsmen) and Fishermen.

The depictions – alongside representations of gardeners, jugglers or peasants produced at the same time or later – give expression to Gottlieb’s interest in working people. The artist was able to transform these noble scenes to give them a universal, spiritual message. Simultaneously, they are outright modern in the expressiveness of form, flat colours and pure line. The impulse that initiated this actually symbolistic search came from Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s The Poor Fisherman that has since become a classic.