Two Boats at the Harbor of Dieppe (1854): Art, History and Details

Two Boats at the Harbor of Dieppe (1854) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Two Boats at the Harbor of Dieppe
• Date: 1854
• Creator attribution: Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor and pencil on paper laid down on board
• Dimensions: Image: 22.5 x 34.6 cm (8 7/8 x 13 5/8 in.); Sheet: 22.5 x 34.6 cm (8 7/8 x 13 5/8 in.); Mounted: 24 x 36 cm (9 7/16 x 14 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2021.108

A detail from the museum

Eugène Delacroix described making this drawing in his journal, writing on September 1, 1854: “Drew from my window, before dinner, some boats.”

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue de la vente…Eugène Delacroix. Paris: Hotel Drouot, 1864
• Robaut, Alfred, Ernest Chesneau, and Fernand Calmettes. L'œuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix, peintures, dessins, gravures, lithographies. Paris: Charavay Frères, 1885.
• 19th Century European Paintings. New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1976

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.