Ships and Sailing Boats Leaving Le Havre

In 1887 Le Havre was France's gateway to the Atlantic, the port where liners for New York and ships loaded with cotton and coffee came and went on every tide. Getting them through the Seine estuary, with its shifting sandbanks, was the job of pilots, who sailed out in small, fast cutters to meet each vessel. When Boudin sent this canvas to the Salon of 1888, he called it The Pilot Boat. The big square-rigger in the middle and the sails along the horizon are the traffic. The title most likely means the little boat heeling in the foreground, spray at its bow and a flag streaming from its mast. Boudin signed and dated it in the lower right corner, and the painting later stayed with the family of Paul Durand-Ruel, the Paris dealer who handled his work, until Paul Mellon bought it in 1959.