Rotterdam, The Stock Exchange Bridge

Boudin first crossed to Holland in 1873, encouraged by his friend Jongkind, a Dutch painter long settled in France, and he went back several times over the following years. This is Rotterdam three years later, the water of the Blaak with the bridge in front of the Beurs, the city's stock exchange.

He caught the place mid-transformation. The Nieuwe Waterweg, a channel cut through to the North Sea, had opened in 1872 and was making Rotterdam one of the busiest ports in Europe. The year after this small canvas was painted, an elevated railway went up along the same stretch with a station beside the exchange. The Beurs was destroyed in the German bombing of the city on 14 May 1940, along with the rest of the old centre, and the Blaak was afterwards filled in with the rubble.