O Porto de Quimper

Boudin painted this Breton harbour in 1857, early in his career and years before he became the man who talked a teenage Claude Monet into painting outdoors. He set up beside the Odet river where the quays of Quimper were busiest, boats and working figures in front, and behind them the twin spires of the cathedral. Those spires were brand new. They had only been finished the year before, and this is the first known painting to show them in place. The handling sits between two worlds, the careful foliage of the older Barbizon landscape painters and the loose, breezy sky and water that would soon be called Impressionist. It is painted on wood, not canvas, a small panel about 40 centimetres high.