Etretat 1890

Eugène Boudin captured this scene with oil on canvas, presenting a group of fishing boats resting on the shores of Étretat. Here, the motif of the boat is dominant: a vessel between worlds, of comings and goings, of hope and the unknown. Since ancient times, boats have carried a powerful symbolic weight, representing not only transportation but also the journey of life and the passage of time. We see such symbology echoed in ancient Egyptian funerary boats carrying souls to the afterlife, or the mythical ship of Theseus, constantly renewed yet ever the same. Boudin's boats, stranded on the shore, are not at sea, but they are loaded with this ancestral memory. They stand as a testament to human endeavor, the courage to confront the immense sea, and the inevitable cycle of use and decay. The boats evoke a certain melancholy: a symbol of human ambition grounded by the realities of nature.