Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Sailboats in a Port

Attributed to Édouard Manet
1832-1883

Sailboats in a Port

ca. 1870.
10 1/8 x 6 9/16 inches (257 x 166 mm)
Black chalk, blue and brown watercolor, over pencil, on paper.
1996.55

Bequest of Miss Alice Tully.

Notes
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.
Associated names
Tully, Alice, 1902-1993, former owner.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department