View of a Port

1871 was the year Monet could not go home. He had left Le Havre for London in the autumn of 1870, ahead of call-up for the Franco-Prussian war, and when the armistice came in January he stayed on. He sailed in May and went to Holland rather than back to France, spending the summer at Zaandam, just north of Amsterdam.

This canvas belongs to that unsettled year. It was painted on a hazy day, with the whole working traffic of the harbour caught in very few strokes, and the handling is already close to the picture he would make at Le Havre the following year, the one that gave Impressionism its name.

Which harbour this is has never been established. Paul Durand-Ruel, the dealer Monet had met in London, bought the canvas in May 1872, most likely from the painter himself.