Le Havre , the harbor

In the summer of 1884 Le Havre, at the mouth of the Seine, was France's great Atlantic port. Steamers of the transatlantic line to New York tied up there alongside wooden sailing ships that still carried much of the world's cargo. In the lower right corner of this small panel Boudin wrote not only his name but the day, the 26th of August 1884. On the right the masts and rigging of the moored ships crowd together, and among them stands the funnel of a steamer. Everything else is sky. As in so many of his pictures, he gave about two thirds of the panel to the clouds, white and grey and touched with yellow, while the water below lies almost still and holds faint reflections of the masts and the harbour crane. The painting came to the Brooklyn Museum in 1913, a gift from Mrs. Carll H. de Silver in memory of her husband.