On the Jetty

Eugène Boudin

National Gallery of Art

Eleven men, women, and children stand around a freestanding flagpole near a floating dock on a beach in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted, and dozens more people are gathered on the dock. The women wear dresses with long skirts in shades of charcoal gray, dark yellow, garnet red, and black, and one woman holds a muted blue parasol. The men wear suits in dark gray. A black dog stands and a white dog lies on the parchment-yellow beach near the flagpole, and the flag is white edged in blue. The dock angles away from us and to the right into the pale aquamarine-green water. Another dock in the distance lines the left third of the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Puffy, smoky-tray clouds fill most of the blue sky above. The artist signed the lower right corner, “E. Boudin.”