Venice, The Grand Canal

Eugene Boudin was the painter who, back in the 1850s on the Normandy coast, first pushed a teenage Monet to set up an easel outdoors and paint the sky straight from life. By 1895 Boudin was in his seventies and near the end, and he made the last of three trips to Venice, a city he had come to late. He worked fast and small, this one on a wooden panel barely a foot wide, the Grand Canal opening flat toward the domes with gondolas strung across the water. He produced around 75 Venetian views that year. Soon after, he told a friend the Venice trip would be his swansong, and he died in 1898.