Fishing Harbor at Low Tide
ca. 1864
Medium
Pen and black ink
Dimensions
6 7/8 x 4 9/16 in. (17.4 x 11.6 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The J.B. Neumann Collection, Gift of Dr. Franz H. Hirschland, 1951
Accession Number
51.504.13
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin’s “Fishing Harbor at Low Tide,” created around 1864, depicts a quiet coastal scene rendered in pen and black ink. The medium’s fine, expressive lines allow the artist to suggest both the receding water and the sturdy forms of boats, buildings, and harbor structures with remarkable clarity. Measuring just under seven inches high, the drawing rewards close viewing, inviting the eye to explore the small, carefully observed details that give the scene its sense of lived reality. Bresdin, an independent French draftsman admired by later Symbolists, often turned to everyday subject...
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin · 1822–1885
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) was a visionary French draughtsman, engraver, and lithographer whose fantastical imagery captured the empathy of rural poverty and the wild exuberance of the imagination. Born on August 12, 1822, in Montrelais near Le Fresne-sur-Loire in Brittany, he grew up in the Breton countryside amid its bardic folklore traditions before a family dispute left him homeless in Paris...