The Shrimp Girl

The Shrimp Girl is an oil painting from about 1740 to 1745 by the English painter William Hogarth, measuring roughly 63.5 by 52.5 centimetres and held today at the National Gallery in London. It depicts a young street vendor balancing a basket of shrimps and mussels on her head, work of the kind typically done by the wives and daughters of London fishmongers. Left unfinished and never sold during the lifetime of Hogarth, the painting remained with his widow, who defended its quality after his death, and it only passed into other hands and received its present title after her own death in 1789. Its loose, sketch-like handling is often noted as unusually free for its period. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/