Trouville, los espigones en marea alta

By 1885 Trouville had been a railway resort for more than 30 years, and Boudin had been painting its visitors since the crinoline days of the 1860s. He signed this canvas at Deauville, just across the mouth of the river Touques, and in his own account book the entry reads simply marine, with a price beside it. That April the Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild bought it from him for 1,000 francs. Two years later she passed it to the town of Rennes, where it entered the museum as a gift to the municipality and still carries the inventory number given to it in 1887. What he chose to paint was the working piers at the harbour mouth, at the hour the title names, when the tide is full.