Trouville, the Jetties at Low Tide

Boudin was 61 when he painted this, and he was no longer short of money. In 1883 the dealer Durand-Ruel opened a new Paris gallery with a show of 150 of his pictures, and the year after that Boudin built himself a house in Deauville, across the river mouth from Trouville. He spent every summer of his last 14 years there. The crowds of holidaymakers on the Trouville sand had made his name back in the 1860s. This is the harbour side of the town, at the hour when the tide has gone out and left the moored boats sitting on the mud, their masts pointing up into a sky that takes most of the panel. One man is rowing in the channel of water still left.