Q18918100

Painted in 1874 on panel — a support favoured by Jongkind for outdoor studies because of its smooth surface and portability — this work belongs to the mature phase of an artist who had by then profoundly influenced the younger Impressionist generation. Jongkind spent decades moving between the Netherlands, the Norman coast, and Paris, accumulating a body of work rooted in direct observation of weather, water, and light. Panel paintings from this period often functioned as rapid on-site records that the artist would later use to inform finished canvases, though many were exhibited and sold as independent works in their own right. His technique by the 1870s was highly assured: colour laid on with spontaneous confidence, forms suggested rather than described. The work is held at MuMa Le Havre, whose collection preserves a strong group of Jongkind's Norman-period work alongside paintings by artists he directly influenced.

The panel support allows Jongkind to drag a loaded brush across a smooth ground, leaving visible texture at the edges of strokes. Paint is applied thinly in passages of sky and water, with denser impasto reserved for architectural elements and foreground detail.