Entrance to the Harbor, Le Havre

Tall-masted sailing ships ride at anchor in the wide harbor of Le Havre while small boats cross the water, the pale sky filled with layered cloud and every ripple and pennant catching the breeze. Eugène Boudin painted this spacious harbor scene in 1883, late in a career spent almost entirely along the Channel coast, and its light, silvery handling looks directly ahead to the Impressionism he had helped to seed on these same beaches a generation earlier. The picture passed through the hands of Durand-Ruel before joining the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.