The Quay at Antwerp, Belgium

For centuries the great river that feeds Antwerp, the Scheldt, was effectively shut. Ships heading to the sea had to pay a toll to the Dutch downstream, and it slowly choked the port. In 1863 the European powers clubbed together and simply bought that toll out, and within a few years Antwerp's quays were crowded again. Boudin painted this working waterfront in 1867, close-packed with masts and moored boats along the wharf. He belonged to the generation before the Impressionists and had once talked a teenage Claude Monet into carrying his easel outdoors to paint what was really in front of him. What Boudin cared about above all was weather. The painter Corot called him the king of skies, and it was the shifting grey light over the estuary, as much as the boats, that drew him to this harbour.