Tour Scotland Video Wives of Fishermen Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Glasgow

Tour Scotland video of the Wives of Fishermen sculpture in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum on ancestry visit to Glasgow, Scotland. Sculptor, Pieter Braecke, was born in 1858 in Nieuport, West Flanders. He trained at the Bruges Academy under Henry Pickery and at the Leuven Academy under Gerard Vander Linden. This sculpture was apparently inspired by the death of Braecke’s cousin Pieter, who in 1869 had witnessed a fishing boat perishing in a storm while the wives looked on. It focuses on the grief and anguish of the fisherwomen as they helplessly watch the fate of their husbands and sons at sea. Braecke wrote: " The women, shoving the one against the other, the anxious eyes wide opened, see their husbands and sons swept away by the savage waves and being devoured by the sea, " There appears to be no hope offered by this sculpture, only solidarity in suffering. Executed in 1914, the sculpture can also be interpreted on a universal level, at a time when women watched their husbands and sons leave for war.

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