Fishergirls Coiling Tackle

Winslow Homer (1836–1910), the American painter, made Fishergirls Coiling Tackle in 1881. It is a watercolour on paper, 35.6 by 50.2 centimetres (14 by 19 3/4 inches). Two young women in blue pleated skirts, white blouses, red kerchiefs and wide-brimmed hats work in a sunlit courtyard. A younger girl holding a doll watches from the foot of a staircase hung with drying nets. Fishermen's boots hang in the shadows, and two chickens peck at the ground.

Sotheby's lists a possible earlier showing under the title Fisherman's Daughters, at the Brooklyn Art Association in March 1882.

The watercolour was sold at Sotheby's New York on 28 November 2007, as lot 8 of the American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture sale, against an estimate of $4,000,000–6,000,000. ARTnews reported a price of $4.5 million, and results websites give $4,521,000; neither source states whether the premium is included.

The provenance starts with Henry C. Valentine of New York, around 1882, and then his wife, Grace Barrett Valentine, of Darien, Connecticut. Tom Donlon owned it in 1943, and a private collector in New York acquired it from him in 1946. It passed by descent to that collector's son, who consigned it.