The Dutch Dock, Dunquerque

In the lower right of this canvas Boudin wrote the place and the month, Dunquerque and juillet, and beside his signature the year, 89. He turned 65 that July. Down in Paris the Exposition Universelle was running under the brand-new Eiffel Tower, and before the year was out its jury would give him a gold medal. He was up on the Channel coast instead, in a harbour being rebuilt around him. Dunkirk had grown into the third port of France, its quays getting warehouses and hydraulic cranes, and digging had started on the sea lock that opened in 1896. The dock he chose, the Bassin des Hollandais, was still full of working boats. The picture went through a London saleroom in 1957 and reached the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1968, left to it by the collector Sidney Ernest Prestige.