Port of Cameret

By 1872 Camaret, out on the western tip of Brittany, was one of France's busiest sardine ports. Around 150 two-masted boats worked out of it, with shipyards and canneries rising along the shore. Boudin arrived the year after the Franco-Prussian War and set his easel at low tide, when the boats tilt on the wet sand and the harbour waits for the water to return. He was already known along the Channel coast as a painter of skies, and the young Monet had learned from him to work outdoors before the motif itself. Most of the canvas here is given to weather, the pale shifting Atlantic sky Boudin watched more closely than almost anyone. The sardine fishing held on until the catch failed around 1900, when Camaret turned to lobster.