Homer began to paint the hard lives of New England fishermen and their families on a monumental scale in the 1880s, marking their reliance on— and struggles with — the sea. In The Fog Warning, a fisherman, having caught two large halibut, faces his hardest task-returning to the mother ship with his heavy load. He looks at the horizon, judging the distance he must row in increasingly ominous weather. A dangerous fog bank approaches, its ragged streamers mimicking his weathered profile and echoing the diagonal position of the dory. This man directly confronts nature. Should he throw out the fish to make his boat lighter and increase his chances of survival?