Blue, at the point it becomes ordinary

The record dates Moored Boats to 1887, and the measured palette reads as blue — a single family, with nothing else dominant. Blue is measured on seven works dated 1887, up from three the year before and one in 1885. This entry belongs to the year the reading stops being rare.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 52 by 65 centimetres and the location is given as a private collection, the category covering twelve of the ninety-five works dated 1887.

Boats, and the river year

Boats are named in five titles in this catalogue, three of them dated 1887; the Seine appears in eleven titles, all of them dated 1887. A period defined by a river is unusually easy to see in a chronological list, and the measurements move with it: blue reaches its single-year maximum of twenty-six in 1888 and then declines. The record gives a size, an owner category and a year, and the rest of what could be said about a moored boat is not in it.