Dunkirk, view of the fishing port

Painted in 1873 and held at the Museum Am Römerholz in Winterthur, this late work by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot depicts the fishing port of Dunkirk—a northern French coastal city whose gray, atmospheric light was well-suited to Corot's silvery tonalist approach. In his late career, Corot increasingly favored misty, poetic landscapes over his earlier more structured Italian views, and harbor scenes with their atmospheric sea light offered him the soft, diffused illumination he sought. By 1873 he was 77 and producing some of his most vaporous, intimate late paintings.

Corot's late technique—thin veils of silvery gray-green paint applied with feathery strokes—gives the Dunkirk harbor scene its characteristic misty poetry. The distinction between sky, water, and land is softened to near-unity, with masts and figures emerging as darker accents from the luminous atmospheric ground.