llamapunk:

gandalf1202:

Claude-Oscar Monet – The Museum at Le Havre [1873] on Flickr.

This is an important work which dates from a key period in the artist’s career. In the early 1870s Monet lived mainly at Argenteuil but made frequent trips to his home town, Le Havre, on the Normandy coast. In 1872 and 1873 he painted several views of the harbour at Le Havre. The view here is taken from one of the walls of the inner harbour looking across to the Musée des Beaux-Arts. The museum was destroyed during the Second World War and has since been replaced by a modern structure.

[National Gallery, London – Oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm]

what is going on over there in the sails on the left side of the painting? are they having A Problem or is it just perspective?

The mainsail on that boat is in the process of being raised or lowered.

There are two halyards on a gaff-rigged sail; the throat halyard (which attaches to the gaff near the mast) and the peak halyard (which attaches to the gaff away from the mast). While raising or lowering the sail it’s normal for it to be in a state in which the peak halyard has not been tightened enough to actually raise the gaff and tighten the leech of the sail; that’s normally the last thing that happens when hoisting, and the first thing you undo when lowering.

You can see the lowered (or not yet raised) peak halyard in the painting. Also, it looks like there are several people standing around the base of the mast, which makes sense if they’re hoisting or lowering the sail.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1nausSb.

Tags: sailing, foredeck work.

This entry was posted by jbc on Sunday, May 18th, 2014 at 6:52 am and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.