The Sea Seen from the Top of the Cliffs

Steam packets had been working out of Le Havre since about 1820, across the estuary to Honfleur and up the Seine to Rouen. By steam the crossing to Honfleur took under an hour, against three or four under sail. Look at the boats on the right of this little canvas, painted probably around 1830. Among the sails, one dark hull trails a line of smoke, and more smoke rises over the town at the far end of the long, pale beach. Corot made the view from the cliffs as a study and kept it until he died in 1875. The red Corot in the lower left corner is the stamp of the studio sale that followed. In 1906 the painter and collector Étienne Moreau-Nélaton gave it to the state, in a gift that also included Manet's Luncheon on the Grass, on condition that it never be lent.