The Kearsarge at Boulogne

Weeks after sinking a Confederate raider, an American warship rests off a French port, and Manet pushes it to the back. In front, a little fishing boat runs before the wind across a green sea.

The story behind the painting

On 19 June 1864 the USS Kearsarge sank the Confederate raider CSS Alabama at the Battle of Cherbourg, one of the most celebrated naval actions of the American Civil War, watched by spectators on the French coast. Manet did not see it, but painted an imagined Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama. In July 1864 the Kearsarge docked several times at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the first American warship to do so, drawing crowds. Manet visited, perhaps boarding around 10 July to study her profile. He made a watercolour often called a study from life, though differences from photographs of the ship raise doubts.

What to look for

The picture is stacked in four horizontal bands. At the bottom, a green sea of broad, energetic strokes in blue and grey over deep green, crossed by two arcs of white foam pushed by opposing currents. Next, a fishing boat drives diagonally toward you, its brown sails set against turquoise water and balancing the dark ship. Third, the water turns blue and the Kearsarge sits near the top edge in strict profile, as ship portraits demanded, with four small sailing craft around her. Finally, white clouds grow greyer toward the horizon. Notice the strong contrasts and unmuted colour laid in broad swaths.

Meaning and intent

Compared with the dramatic battle scene, this picture is calm. Although the warship is the subject, Manet lifts it into a higher band and gives the foreground to the fishing boat, moving our attention from a famous victory to everyday harbour life. In a letter he said he painted the Kearsarge the way it looks at sea, which some scholars take to mean he worked from observation this time. Others link the simplified, silhouetted rigging to Manet's interest in Japanese prints. The painting has gone by several titles, including The Steamboat, Fishing Boat Coming in Before the Wind, and wrongly, The Alabama off Cherbourg.

Legacy

The canvas was shown at Martinet in Paris in 1865 and in Manet's own exhibition on the Avenue de l'Alma in 1867. It later passed through Boussod and Valadon, the collector Goupy and Durand-Ruel to Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer and her descendants. Since then it has appeared in major Manet exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Paris and Amsterdam, including Manet and the Sea in 2004 and Manet / Degas in 2023 to 2024. It is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which in 2003 devoted an exhibition to Manet and the battle of the Kearsarge and Alabama.