Winslow Homer was one of the most influential of late 19th century American artists, revolutionising American painting with his quasi-impressionist style. H e had worked as an illustrator (he recorded the Civil War) and a strong sense of realism permeates his paintings. He visited England twice in 1881-82 and spent some months in Cullercoats (at No. 12 Bank Top). Homer painted the fisher-folk rather than the fashionable visitors to Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, and critics consider that his Cullercoats experience turned him from a painter of rural genre scenes back into a violently realistic painter of the sea, the finest of his era. Robert Hughes calls him one of the greatest of 19th century realists.
In October 1881, Homer saw the wreck of the barque Iron Crown at Tynemouth, which inspired another of his famous paintings. The crew were rescued in a combined effort by Tynemouth lifeboat and the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade.