Eugène Boudin, 'Deauville Harbour', about 1888-90

Born in Honfleur, Boudin – the son of a ship’s captain – was constantly fascinated by the life of Normandy ports. He spent each summer from 1864 on the coast, in Trouville and its sister town Deauville, which sit either side of the river Touques. In 1884 he built a house in Deauville, where he lived for the summer months during the last 14 years of his life.

Boudin painted the port of Deauville throughout his career, recording it as it developed and grew busier with trade, fishing boats and the yachts of wealthy visitors. He painted such scenes as this partly to satisfy the demands of dealers but also because he wanted to capture the movement of water and clouds, the transient gleam of light playing on waves and the characteristic motion of ships.

What attracted Boudin was not necessarily the bustling life of the quaysides, but scenes of vessels entering or leaving ports in relatively calm conditions. Here magnificent sailing ships, their tall masts punctuating the cloud-filled sky, sit in the harbour, their hulls reflected in the still waters. The scene is curiously devoid of people: the only hint of a human presence is the hastily sketched in suggestion of two figures in a boat beside the central sailing ship.

In 1883 the critic Gustave Geoffroy noted that Boudin was in love with the sea, adding that ‘he knows all the inlets, all the ports, all the river mouths... He records alluvial formations, the pools of water left far inland by high tides; he also records docks cluttered with high-sided vessels. He is full of the poetry of the sea and he is wholly familiar with the techniques of navigation.’