La charrette à poisson, Berck

Berck sits on a flat sand coast in the far north of France with no deep-water harbour, so its fishing fleet simply ran aground on the beach with the tide, up to a hundred flat-bottomed boats at a time. That is why the catch leaves by cart here. There was nowhere to unload it but the sand. Boudin worked at Berck through the 1870s and 1880s, and the town was changing under him. Since 1861, when a local woman and a doctor began treating children with bone tuberculosis in the sea air, Berck had been filling with hospitals and sanatoria, and the beach that held the boats was also where the patients were brought out for the air. The painting is small, about 32 by 45 centimetres, and Boudin signed it, dated it and named the place along the bottom edge.