Trouville Pier

In 1893, at the end of another season at Trouville, Boudin wrote that the sailing boat had already grown scarce and that its slow disappearance was going to make the seascape monotonous. He was 69 and had been working that coast for more than thirty years, long enough to watch steam push sail out of the Channel traffic. He went on painting the same harbour anyway. The year before he had been made a knight of the Legion of Honour, a recognition that came late for him, and since his wife died in 1889 he had been wintering in the south of France for his health and coming back north for the summer. The painting ended up in Johannesburg, in a gallery whose first collection was put together in London and shipped out in 1910.