Woman on the Shore

In Woman on the Shore, a young woman seated on a beach gazes across the calm, lapping water toward the horizon, where a ghostly ship under full sail appears. Hands clasped around her drawn-up knees, the figure is barefoot and wears a simple dark skirt and a white blouse, the sleeves rolled up above her elbows to indicate her usual manual labor, probably as a member of a local sea-going community. A fringed shawl is crossed over her torso and secured about her waist. Sunlight glints off the waves and highlights the form of the watching woman, but faintly outlined clouds piled on the dim horizon evoke the perils of the sea for the distant sailors.

Two years after Pyle made this drawing, it was published alongside the artist's poem "The Sea-Gull's Song" in the November 25, 1882, issue of the popular magazine Harper's Weekly, for which the artist had been creating illustrations for several years. In the poem, the young woman imagines that the cries of the birds are their message that her lover, a sailor, will return to her bearing his love, if not material riches. Pyle originally may have made Woman on the Shore independent of the poem, however, for no sea gulls can be seen in the drawing. It was reworked for publication to show a larger expanse of sky, in which six gulls are flying.

Pyle's image combines several current subjects in American art of the late nineteenth century. The theme of a contemplative figure by the sea's edge emerged along with growing interest in shoreline landscapes and an emphasis on nature as a metaphor for the inner world of the individual. In Pyle's Woman on the Shore, as his poem makes explicit, the woman contemplates the ocean as she simultaneously searches her heart. Humbly attired as sailor's sweetheart, she also reflects the growing popularity of images of European peasant workers in American art beginning in the 1870s. The year after Pyle drew his Woman on the Shore, Winslow Homer, his former fellow illustrator and associate during his recent years in New York, began portraying similar types of fisherwomen on England's rugged northeast coast, in such works as the Terra Foundation's Perils of the Sea (TF 1995.38). While Homer drew his depictions from first-hand knowledge, Pyle probably worked from other images or written accounts of such types, lending his image its somewhat romantic quality.

"The Sea-Gull's Song" by Howard Pyle

What does the sea-gull say?

What is the promise it brings to me
From over the restless, heaving sea?
What does the sea-gull say?

What does the sea-gull say?
Does it speak of a lover that sails to me
From over the misty, wonderful sea,
With gold and silver, and silks that shine,
To make me, perhaps, a lady fine?
What does the sea-gull say?

This does the sea-gull say:
That far away from over the sea
A sailor lad is sailing so free,
And the wealth he brings is his heart to me,
This does the sea-gull say.

Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Ships at Sea: Sailing Through Summer, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 6–August 26, 2001.

Modern Views: Picturing Victorian Life,The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, July 2005–March, 2006. (Print & Drawing Gallery 163 installation).

Pyle, Howard. "The Sea–Gull's Song." Harper's Weekly 26 (Nov. 25, 1882): cover.

Morse, Willard S. and Gerturde Brincklé, eds. Howard Pyle: A Record of his Illustrations and Writings. Wilmington, Delaware: The Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1921. Text, p. 63.

Davis, Paul Preston, ed. Howard Pyle: His Life–His Work, Vol. 1. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2004. Text p. 68, 370.

Davis, Paul Preston, ed. Howard Pyle: His Life–His Work, Vol. 2. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2004. Ill, p. 476.