Festival in the Harbor of Honfleur

Boudin painted this in 1858, on a wooden panel a little over half a metre wide, small enough to carry down to the quay and work on there. The old Norman port of Honfleur was by then a place painters went. On the hill above the town the Ferme Saint-Simeon, a cider farm that let rooms cheaply, filled up each summer with landscape painters working outdoors along the Seine estuary, and over the following decade Jongkind, Courbet and the young Monet all stayed and worked there. What Boudin caught on this particular day is a holiday. The ships along the quay are dressed overall, strung with signal flags from stem to masthead in red, yellow, blue and white, and moored among the sailing craft, flagged for the same occasion, is a dark steamer with a single funnel.