As Juliet Wilson-Bareau and David Degener have shown in their explorations of Manet and his relationship with the sea, maritime subjects were a frequent motif in the artist's work, and his innovations inspired his contemporaries to renew the genre of seascapes.
This sheet is larger than the dimensions of Manet's 1868 sketchbook used in Boulogne and now in the Louvre (RF 11.169) and closer to a lost sheet depicting the harbor at Bourdeaux in 1871. It perhaps comes closest, in its view of the jumble of ships at harbor, to his 1868 canvas “Moonlight, Boulogne” in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF 1993), or his 1871 “The Port at Bordeaux” (private collection). It also bears similarities to Johan Barthold Jongkind's port views. While the attribution to Manet may be aspirational, the sheet captures the longstanding interest during the late nineteenth century of maritime views.
Tully, Alice, 1902-1993, former owner.