We more commonly see watercolours from Charles Napier Hemy. This work is a rarer oil painting entitled The Run Home. The often-dangerous matter of getting a small sailing boat’s catch home in a rising sea, was a subject matter that the artist was to return to many times in his pursuit of an honest depiction of the struggle of fishermen.

The FH clearly painted on the bow of the boat is the fishing boat registration code for Falmouth and persists today on trawlers registered there. 

Hemy, a keen sailor himself, had 2 boats-cum-floating studios, the Vandervelt and later the Vandermeer, which he used to get out into Falmouth Bay and intimate with his favourite subject matter. This work is dated 1911 and is presented in its original frame.