Daniel Jaugey (French, born 1929)
Boats in a French Harbor
Oil on canvas

Signed lower right Jaugey, inscribed on the reverse. 18 x 15 inches (46 x 38 cm), the frame 24 x 21 inches (61 x 53 cm). Gilt and blue frame with carved corners. Good original condition.

The water and the sky are laid on in the same scraped cream and pale blue, and only the long vertical reflections of the masts tell the harbor from the air above it.

Fishing boats crowd the middle of the picture, their hulls in rust, white and green and their masts rising in thin dark strokes against a waterfront of pale houses with red and orange roofs. The paint is dragged and scraped across the whole canvas, so the boats break into patches of color close up and come together only from a few steps away. A second group of hulls sits lower down, half dissolved into the light on the water, and a small touch of orange on the nearest boat is the brightest color on the canvas.