This austere painting of two dead fish could be taken as a simple rendering of a traditional motif. Given Hartley's poetic bent, deep spirituality, and inclination to endow his works with personal meaning, however, it may have originated in his despair over the drowning deaths of the Mason brothers, two fishermen with whose family Hartley had boarded in Maine. It may also invoke Christian symbolism in which the fish is a metaphor for Jesus.
