ル・アーヴル、水先人の入り江、朝、陽光、上げ潮

Pissarro came to Le Havre in the summer of 1903 at the invitation of a collector in the town who wanted the port painted while it was being rebuilt. He was 73 and his eyes were troubling him. Dust in the open air made them worse, so he worked from a window high in the Hotel Continental, looking down on the basin where the pilot boats lay. This is the morning canvas, with the tide coming in. He had done the same thing at Rouen and at Dieppe, taking a room above a working harbour and painting the same water at different hours of the day. The city of Le Havre bought two pictures from the series that autumn, and they were among the last he finished. He died in Paris that November.