Return of the Terre-Neuvier

Every spring, sailing ships left the small Breton port of Portrieux for the cod banks off Newfoundland, and they were gone for six or seven months. A ship on that run was called a terre-neuvier. In the 19th century the trade took more than 10,000 French fishermen across the Atlantic each year, and their families waited for them through the summer. Boudin painted this return in 1875. The two-masted ship has come in on the tide and now sits on the sand at low water, its sails hanging loose. Horse carts have been driven right up to the hull, and a crowd of women in white caps gathers around it. In the foreground, bundles, baskets and wooden chests lie on the wet beach, already unloaded. Out on the left, grey rain is falling across the bay.