Boats at Berck-sur-Mer

Fishing boats scatter across choppy water in this coastal scene that Edouard Manet painted in 1873 during a stay at Berck-sur-Mer, a working town on the northern coast of France. Their dark, triangular sails tilt with the wind, some close enough to see clearly, others fading into the distance where they become little more than thin marks against the horizon. Manet built the sea from swift strokes of green, blue, and flickering white, all under a flat gray sky that presses down from above. The whole thing has the feeling of something painted quickly, an attempt to grab the weather and the movement before they changed.

Manet is usually mentioned alongside the Impressionists, yet he kept his distance from them and never showed his work in their exhibitions. Even so, this painting reveals how closely his interests ran with theirs, especially the pull toward open air and shifting light. His signature in the lower left is one of the sharpest details on the whole canvas, a small confident mark on what otherwise reads like a loose study. Modest and unpretentious, it makes a good case that an ordinary afternoon by the sea can be reason enough to pick up a brush.