El muelle de Amberes

Boudin first came to Antwerp as a refugee. When the Prussians moved on Paris in 1870 he crossed into Belgium, and he kept returning to the Scheldt afterwards for the shipping. This panel is from 1874, the spring he was also one of the exhibitors at the first Impressionist show in Paris, at 49, older than almost everyone else in that room. The port he was painting was in the middle of its switch from sail to steam and was pulling Germany's transit trade away from Le Havre. Then in the 1880s the city straightened the river quays and cut five new docks into the waterfront, so the working stretch of river in this picture was rebuilt out of existence within about a decade. The Meadows Foundation gave it to Dallas.