The Artist and The Fisherlass
Susan Johnson explains how her grandmother came to be immortalised in the paintings of an American artist
My grandmother was 14 or 15 years old when she met the American artist Winslow
Homer. He was 45. Her name was Maggie Jefferson, and the year was 1881.
He first saw her on The Bar, a reef jutting out from Cullercoats Bay. She was
working the rocks looking for bait, the water swirling around her boots, the wind in her hair, her serge skirt billowing in the breeze.
Homer knew he had found the right location in this natural harbour in the far north of England. In those days everything was stormy: the sea, life, poverty and death. But the
folk were hardy, strong, gutsy and - above everything else - proud. Their life was built around the tides, the seasons, superstitions, rituals and the Fisherman's Mission.
The community was tight-knit and had a richness about it that drew its members together. They were law-abiding folk who knew their place and their God: He was
master of all, the lynch-pin that held them together when the storms raged - and there were plenty of storms.
Strangers were few: artists came and went, bur rarely stayed; Cullercoats could be
hostile to strangers. The village families could be counted on one hand, and consequently there were a lot of intermarriages which caused rows that could turn into
feuds. But when storm clouds gathered, whether on sea or land, they stuck together and forgot their differences.
It was into this wary 19th century village that the American artist came, dapper and
bright, looking for girls to paint. Would he be allowed to stay for long? In fact, he stayed for almost two years, and
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Homer found for himself a tumbledown cottage, facing the cliffs so that he could be in touch with the elements day and night, and turned it into a studio. He gradually eased himself into village life, becoming known as the rich American who wanted to paint the fisher girls, and my grandmother seemed to be his favourite.
Cullercoats must have been a healthy place to live in those days. All the young girls carried creels, mended nets, strung hooks and raised very large families. They were big lasses, strong-featured and bold, and they wore very colourful clothes: traditional hemmed pleated skirts, coloured blouses and scarves. The wind would catch at the skirts and cause them to billow, showing petticoats or even red stockings; many went bare-legged. Their hair was tied back with ribbons and slides, and their cheeks were rosy with the fresh sea air. They were an artist's dream.
My grandmother Maggie was such a girl - tall and wholesome, with clear-defined blue eyes, a straight nose and an engaging smile; she could hold Homer's attention. She was at the cliff edge every day working the rocks, filling the creels and holding steady the cobles. She was a hardy girl, and he saw in her the images he wished to place on canvas.
Homer paid a shilling a sitting. A kind of hierarchy developed with Maggie being the favourite, which caused petty jealousies and, according to my mother, a falling in and out of favour with the other girls. He used to paint other girls, but often a cameo of Maggie would appear in the corner of the canvas.
The fact that Maggie sat for hours, watching and not taking part in the hard work of the fishing village while Winslow painted the scene, was overlooked because the more she was painted, the more money she could give to her mother. Fishing depended on the nature of the sea: the waves could be mountainous and last for days. Gales and swells took everything in their wake, and all the men could do was watch and wait for a lull. No fish meant no money.
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So for hours Maggie sat on the cliffs, mending nets, looking out for the return of the cobles with her father, carrying the creels up the
sands, walking out purposefully in the early morning to greet the boats. In all these different activities Homer painted her with fervour to catch the moment.
What were her thoughts as she sat there? Did she day-dream, or was her mind totally absorbed by just sitting? Did he talk to her of his
life, his childhood, or describe the life he had left behind in America? Or was he as absorbed in the moment as she was?
As an uneducated girl, she would have been unable to engage in intellectual conversation, but she was spiritually rich. Her knowledge of
the sea was her intelligence - changes in the weather, darkening clouds, gathering storms, the cycle of the tides, the migrations of birds,
the salmon season. These she could relate to him because her life was dictated by the sea and all who worked with it. She saw the same
life for herself as for her mother and she was grateful, because she knew no other way. No wonder she felt flattered by this excitement in her young days.
Even when Homer travelled further down the coast and painted the cliffs at Flamborough Head, he still placed Maggie in the landscape.
He became well respected and mixed with the local men as well as the merchants of the day. Quiet and studious but influential, he gave the villagers an idea of what benefits an education could bring.
When he left, Homer wanted to take my grandmother with him: what a different tale that
would have made. But instead he took with him images of Cullercoats history that now hang in art galleries all over America. It makes my heart sing to think that Maggie is still there in spirit.
She went on to marry a local fisherman, William Storey, and in their small cottage she bore him 17 children. Some sons were lost in the First World War, while other siblings
fell victim to diphtheria and other childhood illnesses of the time.
William was a typically blunt, hardy, uneducated Cullercoats man, but gained renown by
taking part in 1914 in a lifeboat rescue off the coast of Whitby involving a stricken hospital ship, Rohilla, with 229 people on board. All navigational lights had been extinguished
because of the war, and with only lamps to guide the way, the lifeboat crew saved more than 50 doctors and nurses who would otherwise have perished in the mountainous waves.
The 45-mile journey through a boiling sea might today be considered foolhardy, but in those days it was part of the job. The incident is regarded as one of the most outstanding rescues in the history of the RNLI.
Maggie carried the creel all her life, selling fish, baiting lines and raising a family. She was a robust and placid woman, kind and gentle and well respected in the village. Her
beauty was enhanced rather than diminished by the passing years, and her complexion was the envy of many a woman a quarter of her age. She was one of the last remaining fishwives
in Cullercoats and when she died in her 89th year she left 57 descendants. She never forgot Homer, but kept many of her thoughts to herself. Perhaps she was recalling those
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Maggie in her late 60's, with husband William Storey |
(This article was first published in "The Northumbrian" magazine, and is reproduced here with the permission of the author.)