Luar sobre o porto de Boulogne

Manet spent part of the summer of 1868 at the Channel port of Boulogne, and one night he painted the harbour from an upper window of his hotel. Research into the moon and the tides has pinned it to around midnight on the 3rd of August. A fishing boat is coming in, and a knot of women in the tall local headdresses stands on the quay in the dark, waiting for the men. Almost everything is in shadow. The light is all out on the water, where the moon lays down cold white streaks between the masts. Manet owned a night scene by the old Dutch painter Aert van der Neer, and this is his answer to that tradition of moonlit harbours, made on the spot from a window.