Port of Le Havre

In 1886 the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique put four new steamers on the Le Havre to New York run: La Champagne in May, La Bourgogne in June, La Bretagne in August, La Gascogne in September. Le Havre was France's transatlantic port, and that is the harbour Boudin was painting at exactly that moment. What he set at the front of the picture is a three-masted sailing ship flying the French flag, since sail was still working cargo out of the same port as the liners. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston dates the canvas to about 1886 and has held it since 1927, when Elizabeth Howard Bartol, a Bostonian who had owned it since the 1890s, left it to the museum. Around the anchored hulls, small rowboats go on ferrying passengers out to the ships lying in deeper water.