During the 1870s when he was living at Argenteuil, on the outskirts of Paris, Monet made several trips back to Le Havre, where he had grown up. The city was a thriving commercial and industrial centre, and France’s most important transatlantic port, with a series of harbours and busy docks. For this picture Monet positioned himself on the wall on the inner harbour facing the city’s museum of fine arts and public library, an impressive building that had been erected in 1845.

   Despite the fact that it is relatively large, the picture has the sketchy quality of Monet’s smaller canvases. Broken brushwork conveys the gentle movement of rippling water and the fragmented reflections of boats; the sails that almost obscure the architecture are hastily brushed in. A muted palette, consisting mostly of greyish blues and browns, relieved by touches of warmer orange, conjures up the atmosphere of a northern port under an overcast sky.

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   This is an important work which dates from a key period in the artist's career. In the early 1870s Monet lived mainly at Argenteuil but made frequent trips to his home town, Le Havre, on the Normandy coast.

   In 1872 and 1873 he painted several views of the harbour at Le Havre including his famous 'Impression: Sunrise' (Paris, Musée Marmottan), the picture which provoked the term 'Impressionism'. The view here is taken from one of the walls of the inner harbour looking across to the Musée des Beaux-Arts. The museum was destroyed during the Second World War and has since been replaced by a modern structure.

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