The Kearsarge at Boulogne by Édouard Manet

A dark warship stretches across the left of the picture, its three masts and delicate rigging standing against pale clouds. On the right, a fishing boat comes towards us under large brown sails. Between these unequal vessels, blue-green water opens into a broad expanse. Édouard Manet's The Kearsarge at Boulogne makes a famous ship share our attention with the ordinary traffic of a French port.

Painted in 1864, the oil belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and measures 81.6 × 100 centimetres.^[1] Its subject is the victorious Union warship after the battle with the Confederate raider Alabama. Manet visited Kearsarge near Boulogne after painting the naval encounter from reports.^[2] Here he gives the ship a clear silhouette, surrounded by smaller craft and the moving water through which visitors approached it.

The Ship after Cherbourg

On 19 June 1864, the United States warship USS Kearsarge defeated CSS Alabama off Cherbourg. News of the engagement travelled through newspapers and illustrated reports. Manet's first response was The Battle of the Kearsarge and Alabama, a painting of an event he had not witnessed. His subsequent visit to the surviving vessel gave him another way into the subject.^[1][2]

At Boulogne, Kearsarge anchored in the roads, the waters offshore where a ship could lie safely at anchor. Reaching it meant going out from the town in a smaller boat. The ship attracted curious visitors, some content to circle it and others eager to step aboard. Its fame briefly made a working warship an object of public sightseeing.^[2]

Manet described his own visit in an undated letter to the critic Philippe Burty. He said that Kearsarge had been in Boulogne roads the previous Sunday and that he had gone to see it. He also remarked that he had guessed its appearance fairly well and had painted its appearance at sea.^[2]

The letter connects the two paintings through Manet's changing knowledge of the vessel. He first imagined a reported action, then encountered the ship itself. The precise Sunday has been debated, but the visit belongs to July 1864.

A Port and a Seaside Resort

Boulogne offered Manet more than a visiting warship. He spent part of the summer there with his family, in a town whose harbour traffic existed alongside bathing, promenades and seasonal visitors. His interest could move between large steam vessels, fishing boats and the appearance of the open sea.^[2]

Theodore Reff places these coastal subjects within the growing artistic interest in seaside resorts during the Second Empire. Places increasingly accessible from Paris supplied new subjects as well as new audiences for paintings. At Boulogne, ferries, harbour activity and holiday life occupied adjoining spaces.^[3]

The town remains outside the frame, leaving the vessels and water to establish the setting. The small boats around the warship suggest movement between shore and anchorage, while the nearby fishing boat gives the sea a more immediate working presence.

The Warship's Long Silhouette

The hull forms a dark horizontal mass across the upper left and centre. Its bow points towards the right, ending in a long bowsprit that projects above the water. Three masts rise from this extended body, and fine lines connect them to one another and to the deck.

Against the light sky, the rigging becomes unusually legible. Slender ropes and the ladderlike patterns beside the masts are drawn with a precision quite different from the broad strokes of the sea below. The painting allows the viewer to move between these two kinds of attention: following a narrow line upwards, then looking down into a much looser field of colour.

A short, broad funnel and the dark shape of a suspended launch interrupt the space between the masts. Small figures gather along the deck, scarcely larger than touches of paint. The vessel is substantial, but its people remain distant. They give a sense of scale without turning the picture into a group portrait of identifiable officers or crew.

The dark hull changes relatively little as it passes across the picture. Below it, the water shifts through turquoise, green and grey; above it, clouds brighten and dissolve. This continuity makes the ship appear weighty and still even while small craft move around it. Its steady outline supplies a reference against which the surrounding movement becomes easier to see.

The Brown Sails in the Foreground

The fishing boat at the right offers a different encounter. Its dark bow faces us obliquely, with a pale curl of foam at the waterline. Large brown sails rise above it, filling much of the right side and reaching towards the upper edge. Their warm colour stands apart from the cooler water and sky.

The sails have broad surfaces, dark seams and irregular edges. Ropes stretch towards the bow and the small crew, linking the great area of cloth to the compact hull beneath it. A few marks suggest people leaning or sitting among the boat's equipment, but their activity is absorbed into the vessel's advance.

The contrast with Kearsarge is partly a matter of direction. The warship extends sideways across the picture; the fishing boat seems to enter our space. One presents a long profile, while the other meets us through its bow and swelling canvas. Their dark forms balance across the composition without making the two vessels seem equal in size or distance.

Smaller white sails between them help measure that distance. They stand out against the warship's hull or the green-blue sea, giving the eye intermediate points between the large near boat and the much farther vessel. Their light shapes also prevent the dark ship from closing off the entire background.

Wind across a Large Field of Water

Although the scene is quieter than the battle painting, the water is active. In the foreground, broad curved strokes form troughs and rising waves. Broken white and cream marks catch their crests, sometimes following a curve and sometimes breaking into short, rough touches.

Manet varies the size and force of these marks as the sea recedes. Near the bottom edge, individual strokes remain conspicuous. Farther away, they flatten into longer passages of colour, interrupted by small pale lines. The surface appears to stretch into depth while remaining visibly made from paint.

Blue and green do much of this work. Strong turquoise appears beside deeper green, while grey-blue passages cool the water beneath the ship. White foam joins the colours in some places and cuts across them in others. The darker curves create hollows without a continuous outline around every wave.

The wind is registered in the vessels as well. Sails fill and flags stream, even where the distant water looks relatively smooth. We encounter the sea through changing distances: nearby foam, open water, small boats and a dark ship against the horizon.

The horizon lies high enough to give this water a major share of the canvas. There is no strip of land on which the viewer can stand. Our position feels close to the boats, yet the arrangement also gives a broad survey of their relationships.

From a Visit to a Composed Picture

Seeing the ship did not require Manet to reproduce it with documentary exactness. In their study of the seascapes, Juliet Wilson-Bareau and David C. Degener compare the painting with a photograph taken by François Sébastien Rondin at Cherbourg. They point out differences in the ship's proportions, especially the broad funnel and the bulky silhouette of the suspended launch.^[2]

The comparison helps distinguish recognition from literal accuracy. Masts, hull and rigging make Kearsarge recognisable, while the concentrated dark forms also serve the painting's arrangement. The authors consider it very unlikely that Manet used Rondin's photograph as his source.^[2]

A related ink-and-watercolour drawing in Dijon already places the warship off centre and gives weight to the right side. It has often been understood as an observation made before the ship and then developed into the oil. Wilson-Bareau and Degener question that straightforward sequence. They suggest that sketches, now lost, may have helped Manet construct the drawing and painting, and that the oil may have been completed in Paris after his summer stay.^[2]

The surviving works establish a relationship between study and canvas, but leave parts of the process uncertain. The watercolour's design is itself carefully organised. In the oil, the near fishing boat acquires a stronger presence and becomes a principal counterweight to the warship.

Published X-ray observations support the importance of that arrangement. Wilson-Bareau and Degener report few changes to the initial composition: the ship and the fishing boat's sails were marked out in reserve, although the boat's hull may have been substantially enlarged.^[2] Reserving these silhouettes meant allowing space for them within the surrounding paint.

A Fishing Boat in the Exhibition Title

The painting's name has also directed attention between its vessels. An early 1865 note in which Manet listed works intended for Louis Martinet's gallery identified the federal ship in Boulogne roads. At Manet's independent exhibition near the Pont de l'Alma in 1867, the canvas appeared as Bateau de pêche arrivant vent arrière, or Fishing Boat Coming in Before the Wind.^[2]

That title makes the brown-sailed vessel the subject through which we approach the picture. Its forward movement and expanded sails become the action, while the famous warship supplies a distant setting. The modern title restores Kearsarge to prominence, but the painting continues to distribute its interest between them.

A caricature by G. Randon in Le Journal amusant on 29 June 1867 preserves the fishing-boat title and the arrangement of the two vessels. Its caption mocks Manet for making and exhibiting such a picture when nothing obliged him to do so.^[2] The joke gives one contemporary response to the painting's unfamiliar appearance. It belongs to the reception of Manet's own exhibition, where viewers encountered the seascape among many different kinds of subject.

Beside the Battle Painting

The Philadelphia Museum of Art's Battle of the USS “Kearsarge” and the CSS “Alabama” offers the closest comparison. Also dated 1864, it is a much taller composition, measuring 137.8 × 128.9 centimetres.^[4] Gun smoke spreads across its upper half, while the sinking ship, distant vessels and small endangered figures draw the eye towards the naval action.

Both paintings place a smaller boat near the spectator and a larger vessel farther away. In the battle, a French pilot boat enters from the left. At Boulogne, the fishing boat approaches from the right. These near craft give each picture a strong diagonal movement through water that otherwise occupies a large part of the canvas.

The difference is particularly clear around the warships. In the battle painting, masts and hulls emerge through overlapping smoke. At Boulogne, the single dark profile is exposed against a pale sky, and its rigging can be followed almost line by line. The painting exchanges a confused public event for the presence of a ship that has survived it.

The Fishing Boat in Marine

Manet returned to related forms in the print Marine. The Met dates its impression to 1865–66 and describes a combination of etching, aquatint, roulette and bitten tone, printed in brown ink.^[5] Its small scale makes the movement of lines particularly prominent.

The fishing boat now appears on the left, its sails filled with dense dark hatching. A much brighter group of sails rises near the centre, while smaller craft occupy the right. Across the foreground, curves accumulate into waves around several figures in the water. Open paper and closely packed marks create contrasts that colour supplies in the oil.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France quotes Marcel Guérin's observation that the left-hand boat was borrowed from the Boulogne painting, where it appears on the right.^[6] The motif has moved and changed medium, retaining its strong dark sails and compact bow. It no longer balances the long grey profile of Kearsarge in the same way.

The print's chronology has been catalogued differently. While the Met currently dates it to 1865–66, Wilson-Bareau and Degener proposed a design of about 1868 and a printing of about 1905 for the same impression.^[5][2] The shared fishing-boat motif is clear even though the precise sequence of the print's development remains uncertain.

The Painting at the Met

The Kearsarge at Boulogne entered the Metropolitan Museum through gift and purchase in 1999. Its current credit acknowledges Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen and the supporting donors and funds.^[1] The acquisition brought this encounter between a famous American warship and French harbour traffic into a public collection in New York.

The picture rewards attention beyond the ship's historical identity. Fine rigging rises against clouds, small white sails cross the dark hull and broad strokes turn green water into curling waves. At the right, the brown sails bring an ordinary working boat close to us. Manet makes the vessel that attracted visitors share its place with the sea and the people who used it every day.