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Notes

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This large-scale painting depicts the artist’s iconography of a winter’s day fishing scene, drawn from his own experiences growing up in Port Seton, a Scottish fishing town on the coast of the Firth of Forth.

The central group of fishermen also recall earlier representations of burial scenes, in particular Gustave Courbet’s 'A Burial at Ornans' and James Guthrie’s 'A Highland Funeral'. The painting refers to fishing as a form of sacrificing nature to nourish human life and is typical of the artist’s use of autobiographical material to explore universal themes and the human condition.