Provenance

Bernheim

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This horizontal painting shows a harbor scene filled with tall-masted ships and steamships adorned with colorful flags. The masts of the ship to our left dominate the composition, reaching almost to the top edge of the painting. This ship has a black and white hull and is docked alongside a quay lined with buildings in the left third of the painting. The masts are rigged with ropes and draped with long, strings of flags in red, yellow, blue, and white. A group of people with light-colored clothing gather in small boats around the ship to our left. Another vessel moored in the middle of the painting is also strung with flags, and to our right, a dark steamship with a single smokestack is festooned with similar banners. It floats farther from the quay and town buildings. The water is busy with many people swimming or floating, particularly toward the lower right. Dense buildings line the opposite shore under a blue sky scattered with soft, white clouds. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition so most of the flags are outlined against the sky. The artist signed the lower left corner, “Boudin” with the number 5 followed by an illegible number. In the lower right is the location with some of the letters missing so it reads “Hon eur.”
Eugène Boudin, Festival in the Harbor of Honfleur, 1858, oil on wood, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.10

Festival in the Harbor of Honfleur

Eugène Boudin · 1858 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1983.1.10

Five women, all with brown skin, sit and stand in a landscape painted with tones of emerald green, mauve pink, lilac and plum purple, and cobalt blue in this horizontal composition. To the right of center, a nude woman stands on a patch of violet-colored ground with both arms overhead, as she looks up. To our left, two women wearing only pale blue cloths around their waists sit side-by-side on a patch of amethyst-purple ground. Both sit with their bodies angled to our right, and they look toward the ground with their arms across their chests. To our right of the standing woman, the final pair of women stand or walk toward the right edge of the painting. The woman to our left in that pair wears a dusky rose-pink dress and a bright, coral-pink head covering. She holds one arm across her chest, elbow bent. Next to her, the fifth woman is bare-chested with a white cloth tied around her waist, covering her legs. She looks to our right and holds up her arm, which extends off the right edge of the composition. The purple patches on the ground are surrounded by other areas of raspberry pink and mauve. A band of trees and vegetation stretches across the background, leading back to cobalt-blue mountains along the horizon. Mountains to each side of the composition brush the top edge, and the shallow U of sky between them is ivory white. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “Paul Gauguin 1903.”
Paul Gauguin, The Invocation, 1903, oil on canvas, Gift from the Collection of John and Louise Booth in memory of their daughter Winkie, 1976.63.1

The Invocation

Paul Gauguin · 1903 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1976.63.1