Two Boats at the Harbor of Dieppe

In this late drawing, Eugène Delacroix used spare layers of watercolor to record two large boats floating in a harbor, contrasting the bright tones of the French flags flying on both with the subdued hues of the water surrounding them. The artist recorded the scene during one of five stays in Dieppe, a coastal town that became a popular vacation destination after it was connected to Paris by train in 1848. Delacroix was passionate about depicting the sea and its environs and created numerous variations of this subject over the course of about a decade.