Catalog entry

Commentary

This is one of a very few paintings by Lane that depict vessels at work on the fishing grounds. It was initially presumed to illustrate hand-lining for cod, but in fact shows schooners jigging for mackerel. Close inspection will show the fish to have mackerel stripes and the schooners are fitted with chum (bait) boxes on their sides from which the bait is scattered in a way called "tolling."

In spring, mackerel form large schools off the mid-Atlantic coast and migrate northward with small groups going off to their local spawning grounds as the main school heads northward. When Georges Bank is reached, the school pauses to take advantage of this rich feeding ground; it thereafter breaks up into regional schools which swim off to smaller grounds in Cape Cod Bay, the Gulf of Maine, Canadian coastal waters, and particularly the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The significance of this scene is that it shows the last great gathering of mackerel schooners before the fleet breaks up to follow the smaller schools to their spawning grounds. The 1850s marked a peak period in this fishery when the catching of mackerel by hooks was to give way to capture using the purse seine and subsequent rises and falls in the fortunes of this fishery.

–Erik Ronnberg