American Art Collaborative

Hiram Powers started work on Fisher Boy in 1843, when the model for Greek Slave was almost complete. He was probably inspired by the statue Girl Holding a Shell to Her Ear, by German sculptor Carl Steinhauser, which was described as “a young girl listening to the sound of a shell.” The child in Fisher Boy stands on a beach with his ear to a conch shell, leaning on the tiller of a boat. The delicate facial features and relaxed pose evoke ancient Greek sculpture, which often depicted young men on the threshold of puberty
“He fears an approaching storm, a superstition that the sound of the conch denotes the state of the sea.” Hiram Powers, 1852, in Richard P. Wunder, Hiram Powers, 1989-9