Wrocław – National Museum in Wrocław (After Herring Catch by Franz Skarbina)

This painting is located in the National Museum in Wrocław and it rather intrigued me because it reminded me of the Herring Lassies (or Herring Girls) who used to work in Lowestoft from the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries. In Lowestoft, they tended to work in threes with two of them gutting the herring, whilst the other packed it. Although it was a useful form of money, and some adventure, for the women, the working and living conditions were sub-optimal and I doubt that the conditions in the painting are much different.

It was painted by Franz Skarbina (1849-1910) who was a German artist who primarily painted images from his home city of Berlin and he tried to capture urban life. The artwork was painted in 1888 and although he was in Berlin that year, he had been travelling to Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the years before that, which is from where I imagine the painting was inspired. There’s an interesting article at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy63lpy251zo about those who did the job in Scotland and it sounds tough to me.