A Squall

In French a grain is a sailor's word for a squall, a sudden storm that arrives under a wall of cloud. Boudin painted this one for the Paris Salon of 1886, on a canvas about 117 by 160 centimetres, far larger than his usual pictures. He had tried the motif the year before in a smaller oil, now in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which he entered in his account book as a study for the Salon. The French state bought the finished painting at the exhibition and sent it to Morlaix, in Brittany, where it remains in the town's museum. Most of the canvas is sky. Beneath it two sailing boats lean into a green sea, a red pennant at the nearer masthead, while far off to the left a single sail sits in a band of clear light.