Il battello di Folkestone, Boulogne

Manet painted this in the summer of 1869 from a hotel window at Boulogne-sur-Mer, looking down at the quay where the steam packet left each day for Folkestone across the Channel. Travel by cross-Channel steamer was still fairly new, and he caught the crowd and bustle of it in quick, choppy strokes rather than finished detail. The steamer's funnel smokes at the centre while passengers gather on deck. The woman in white at the far left is his wife, Suzanne, with their son Léon beside her, the family spending the season on the coast. Manet made two paintings of this same departure, this one now in Philadelphia.