Port around Honfleur

In the mid-1850s Honfleur was a port losing ground. Across the Seine estuary, Le Havre had grown into the great harbour for ocean-going ships, and Honfleur's quays were left more and more to fishing boats and coastal traffic. Boudin, born in Honfleur and raised in Le Havre, painted that smaller world. Three men in hats stand on the shore talking to a man in an orange shirt who sits in a rowing boat, while sailing boats wait on the calm water behind them. The panel is small, about 19 by 28 centimetres, and was painted around 1854 to 1857, years before the crowded beach scenes at Trouville that made his name. It later passed through the Paris dealers Bernheim-Jeune and the Lefevre Gallery in London, and in 2019 it surfaced at a regional auction in Newcastle upon Tyne.