Signed 'Demester' (lower right)
Oil on Canvas
36 x 28 cms / 14" x 11"
 
This small oil painting captures a lively coastal scene animated by working sailboats with broad, red-brown sails. With low rowing boats in the foreground and each figure at work there is a sense of everyday activity. The clustered masts and sails create a busy maritime painting.
 
Painted by Eugène Demester, the piece sits comfortably within the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century of French marine painting, when artists increasingly turned from heroic naval subjects to scenes of local labour and leisure. Demester’s oil reflects an interest in light on water, aligning the painting with the broader Impressionist and Post-Impressionist ways of working.