Festival in the Harbor of Honfleur (section)

Bright flags and banners stream from the masts of tall ships crowding this harbor, painted by Eugène Boudin in 1858. The setting is Honfleur, a small port town along the coast of Normandy in France, on what appears to be a festival day. Crowds gather at the water's edge while the colorful pennants ripple in the breeze, giving the whole scene a cheerful, holiday mood. Boudin loved the sea and the coastal towns of his native region, and he came back to paint them over and over across his long career.

Often seen as a link between older painting styles and the Impressionists who followed, Boudin played a quiet but important role in art history. He was an early teacher to a young Claude Monet, urging him to set up his easel outdoors and paint straight from nature. That spirit shows up here in the quick, loose brushstrokes and especially in the wide, cloudy sky filling the upper half of the canvas. His talent for painting skies earned him the affectionate nickname "the king of skies" from a fellow artist.

Rather than capturing some heroic or dramatic moment, this painting simply records an ordinary town enjoying itself by the water. That modest, everyday feeling is exactly what makes it so pleasant to look at, a small celebration held still for well over a century.