' Dads Coming Home ' Winslow Homer , American (1836-1910) Oil on wood , circa 1873 . Private collection Mr and Mrs Woods .

....Homer's early work , whilst set mainly outdoors , are almost all figure paintings . This was a conspicuous departure from the type of pure landscape that dominated nineteenth - century American art . Homer spent the summer of 1873 in Gloucester, Massachusetts , where he painted this family of a fisherman waiting his return . The exuberance suggested by the title - first given when an engraving of the painting was published in Harper's Weekly in 1873 - is tempered by the meditative air of the still , silhouetted figures . The mother faces away from the sea , while the young boy scans a horizon that yields no sign of an approaching boat . Instead of depicting a celebratory narrative of homecoming , Homer captures the more ambiguous moment of watching and waiting . He would have been acutely aware of this aspect of the lives of fisherman's families , for Gloucester had experienced a significant loss of life due to tragedies at sea during his long stay .