1985.59
Night Hauling
Artist
Andrew Newell Wyeth
(Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 7/12/1917 - 1/16/2009, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania)
Title
Night Hauling
Creation Date
1944
Century
20th century
Dimensions
23 in. x 37 1/4 in. (58.4 cm x 94.3 cm)
Object Type
painting
Creation Place
North America, United States, Maine
Medium and Support
tempera on masonite mounted on stretcher
Credit Line
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of Mrs. Ernestine K. Smith, in memory of her husband, Burwell B. Smith
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
1985.59
Night Hauling was painted by the twenty-seven-year-old Andrew Wyeth at the height of World War Two. Set against the Maine coast in Port Clyde, where Wyeth’s family summered, it depicts a shadowy lobsterman hauling in a trap under cover of darkness, the scene lit only by the figure’s concealed lamp and the water’s startling nocturnal phosphorescence. Wyeth originally called the painting The Poacher, a title that allows us entry into the work’s literal narrative, while denying none of its mystery and ritual. Typical of the artist’s work from this period, Night Hauling pushes realism to the brink of surrealist fantasy. The son of famed illustrator N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth emerged at mid-century as one of America’s most popular painters.