The Painters and the Fishergirls. My grandmother Maggie Jefferson was one of Winslow Homers favourite models she can been seen on the signature boards on the sea front at Cullercoats. My talk takes you on a journey to Cullercoats in the late 1880 to the Colony of Artists who came and painted the fishergirls, the seas and the working life of a Northern Village. The drama of the fishing life, where everyone shared or owned a coble, the life of the fishergirl mending nets, hooking lines, carrying the creels to sell the fish from door to door with a patch no one strayed into. The poverty and the boiling cauldron of a sea that took fishermen and then the next day was as still as a lily pond. The hard life, where your counselling took place on the doorstep with your relatives and friends, where you had to get up and get on, because your life depended on the sea, and into this picturesque village came Winslow Homer the American artist who came for a few weeks and stayed almost 2 yrs and in that time painted the most coveted paintings of life in an English fishing village. My grandmother was 15 he was 45, let me tell you her story. The talk lasts approx 45mins its a story full of pride and passion.