Olieverf/doek: 60 x 101 cm
Sadée, a maverick within The Hague School due to his versatile choice of subject matter and use of color, followed in the footsteps of Jozef Israels (1824-1911) in opting for the fishing genre, of which this painting is a good example. The sunlit beach shows Scheveningen women with their typical straw hats, returning from the fish auction that always took place on the beach at the time. Among them a shrimp fisherman with his net busy talking to the women. In the bom barge, the fisherman deposits his last catch in the basket of the waiting woman. For the poor woman on the left of the ship is offered the opportunity to outwit a few fish for free. In his paintings, Sadée always shows compassion for the less fortunate and has an eye for the often harsh conditions that fishermen had to face.
'The love for his country is inherent in everyone and so, after many detours, I returned to our own sea coasts, where a stay at Zandvoort or Scheveningen would give me very different, if not much more beautiful things to see,' wrote Philip Sadée (1837-1904) in a biographical note of 1883.