View of Antibes

Boudin put the day on this canvas. Along the bottom he wrote 12 Avril, and at the lower left the place and the year, Antibes, E. Boudin, 93. He was 68 that spring, working on the Mediterranean, looking across a rocky shore to the old town behind its sea walls, where the bell tower of the cathedral and the tower of the Grimaldi castle stand side by side above the roofs, with the mountains behind. Three months later, on 12 July 1893, the dealer Durand-Ruel bought the picture from him. Then it waited. It stayed in the firm's stock for 27 years, until Detroit bought it in 1920 with city money. The museum had become a department of the City of Detroit the year before, and its bulletin first published the painting in 1921 under a French title, Coup de Soleil, a burst of sunshine.