Camaret. The Harbor During a Thunderstorm

Eugène Boudin's 1873 painting of Camaret harbor during a thunderstorm documents the Breton port on the Crozon peninsula, one of the harbors he returned to throughout his career. Camaret was a working fishing port, and Boudin's interest was always in the combination of human maritime activity and the volatile Norman and Breton weather that made the sea simultaneously livelihood and threat. A thunderstorm over a harbor gave him the opportunity to exploit the dramatic possibilities of stormy sky — the subject matter that would become his greatest legacy to Impressionism and particularly to Monet. The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille holds this as a major example of Boudin's coastal vision.

Boudin's storm harbors deploy dramatic contrasts of dark cloud and luminous water, with the boats and quayside rendered in quick, gestural strokes suggesting movement in wind and rain. The sky dominates the composition, as always in his work — vast and threatening, painted with rapid, directional brushwork that conveys atmospheric turbulence.