Fisherwoman,

1946–48

Fisherwoman exemplifies Wilson’s lifetime quest to record the everyday lives of the rural and urban Black working class. As he explained, “I am striving with each new canvas to paint the Negro with greater feeling and understanding.” In the mid-1940s the artist traveled on a Guggenheim Fellowship to South Carolina, where he immersed himself in the distinctive Gullah culture of the Sea Islands, often going on fishing trips with residents. Although Wilson made extensive on-site sketches, he began to add elements of fantasy. In Fisherwoman he placed an imaginary fish on his subject’s head, never having observed anything like this during his stay, explaining that “[the women] carried everything else on their heads.” Wilson’s scumbled and gestural technique evokes both monumentality and earthiness in this icon-like portrayal of a woman firmly planted within a brooding seascape, in which elements of imagination and reality commingle.