This Dutch seascape was painted in Nevers, France, where Jongkind lived in 1870 to 1872 during the Franco-Prussian War. The bright palette is very different from that used by Jongkind's compatriots of the Hague School and was influenced by the French Impressionists. Thus the subject of Dutch fishing boats, while reminiscent of seventeenth-century Dutch marines, has a less moody, more upbeat feeling. This is the seaside not of poor fishermen but of sunny fruitful harvests, more akin to representations of happy vacationers at Honfleur by Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet, both of whom Jongkind knew.

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