Jetty and Wharf at Trouville

Eugène Boudin

National Gallery of Art

A dozen men, women, and children walk, stand, or sit on a waterside wharf that spans this horizontal painting. A jetty stretches into the distance at a right angle, starting to the left of center. Dozens more people pack the jetty. The people close to us all appear to have pale skin. The men wear suits and hats in brown or black, and the women wear long hoop skirts, capes, and hats, some with veils, in shades of sky blue, red, gray, or mustard yellow. A man and woman sit on an ice-blue bench near a solitary streetlamp at the center of the composition. A small brown dog runs toward the bench from the right, and a black and white dog sniffs the ground to the left. Facing away from us, a man and woman lean onto a white fence at the water’s edge near the entry to the jetty. A dock is across a strip of topaz-blue water, where a sailboat kicks up some white ripples. Two flag-topped masts rise beyond the crowded jetty, and a steampipe between them pours charcoal-gray smoke into the pale blue sky. Paler gray clouds line the top edge of the painting, and a loose band of white clouds lines the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. The scene is loosely painted so people’s features and many details are indistinct. The artist signed and dated the lower right, corner, “E. Boudin. 63.”