The Cove

Boudin painted this small coastal view in oil on specially treated paper, and the sheet was glued onto canvas. The Krannert Art Museum dates it to 1871 but does not name the place. A grassy headland runs out to sea, with pale rocky outcrops breaking through the turf in the foreground. A windmill stands on the far ridge, sailing boats sit on the flat water to the left, and a little group of figures, one of them in red, has stopped on the path. More than half of the picture belongs to the sky, heaped with white cloud over patches of blue. The signature, E. Boudin, is in the lower right corner. The museum received the painting in 1958 as a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Herman E. Cooper.