Trouville 1876

Maxime Lalanne made this pencil and gray wash on paper drawing, titled 'Trouville'. This sketch of the French harbor connects us to the rise of seaside tourism in the 19th century. But look closer and you'll see the working port, the site of industry and labor, rather than leisure. Lalanne renders the scene with a documentary interest in the specifics of place. What was it like to live and work here? The drawing doesn’t romanticize the location. It gives a sense of the gritty reality of dockside labor. The composition is unsentimental, without aestheticizing devices, such as obvious vanishing points. To understand more, we can look at the social and economic history of Trouville in this period. Who came here and why? How did the expansion of tourism impact the existing social structures? These are the kinds of questions that give context to the work of art. The answers are out there in the archives.