Le Havre: Sunset on the Sea

By 1885 Le Havre was the busiest passenger port in France, the place the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique liners left for New York, and its docks were being dug wider almost every year. Boudin stood at the edge of all that and painted open water at sunset, with nothing firm in the picture except the small white disc of the sun on the horizon. He signed it in the corner, E. Boudin 85. He was 61, and the 1880s were the decade his work finally sold well. This canvas went out through Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris and spent much of the 20th century in American hands, in New York and Palm Beach, before Hasso Plattner's collection brought it to Potsdam.