Return of the Fishermen

The smokestacks of ships loom over the French city of Boulogne and spew exhaust into its polluted air. Below, fishermen trudge home through dark streets past a woman who the artist has posed to suggest she is a prostitute. Boulogne’s seedy port attracted Frans Masereel, who admired the tenacity of the people he met there. His primary medium of black-and-white woodcut inspired the painting’s blocky, jagged shapes and dark colors, which invest his subjects with dignity.