Boats at Sea, Sunset

In 1867 the world's fair in Paris put Japanese prints in front of an enormous public, and the museum in Le Havre sees their mark on this canvas. Manet painted it the following summer, 1868, which he spent at Boulogne-sur-Mer on the Channel coast. He took the composition from the upper part of a watercolour study, now in Basel, and then changed it. He added a boat on the right. He also cut the hull of the foreground boat out of the picture, so only its grey sails rise from the bottom edge. Water and sky run together in pale greys, and the boats are thin silhouettes against the setting sun, with almost no illusion of depth. The canvas was recovered at the end of the Second World War, and since 1961 the French state has kept it on deposit in Le Havre while it waits to be returned to its rightful owners.