The Van Gogh Museum holds two paintings by the American-French artist Frank Myers Boggs (1855–1926): Coal Barges on the Thames (c. 1883–86) and Honfleur Harbour (1884–86). Vincent van Gogh most likely acquired them in 1886 through an exchange of paintings, at which time both canvases were inscribed with a signature and a dedication to Van Gogh. It remains unknown which work or works Boggs received from Van Gogh in return.
Artistic exchange
Although no correspondence between the artists survives, the exchange of works and the cordial dedications on both paintings attest to some form of acquaintance between Vincent and Boggs. It is plausible that the relationship arose through Theo. As branch manager of the Goupil gallery (from 1884 Boussod, Valadon & Cie), Theo had regularly handled Boggs’s work since 1882. Then, on 21 October 1886, Theo sold a seascape by Edouard Manet (1832–1883) to Boggs, and on that same day Boggs consigned three of his own paintings for sale. It is entirely possible that Theo took this opportunity to inform Boggs that his brother was interested in an exchange of works. A few days later Vincent wrote to his friend, the artist Charles Angrand (1854–1926), from which it can be inferred that Vincent had recently traded with Boggs. He urged Angrand to arrange an exchange with Boggs as well, adding that ‘you’ll see fine things at his place’, referring to Boggs’s atelier. This implies that Vincent had visited Boggs not long before. He also wrote to the English artist Horace Mann Livens (1862–1936) in September or October 1886 that he had been exchanging works with several artists, in all likelihood including Boggs.
Although Vincent did not explicitly mention the two Boggs paintings in his letters, both appear in one of his two portraits of the art dealer Alexander Reid (1854–1928). He painted Reid in the winter of 1886–87, shortly after the exchange of paintings with Boggs is thought to have taken place. The portrait in question shows Reid seated in a chair in the Van Gogh brothers’ apartment, with the two Boggs works hanging on the wall behind him: to the left Honfleur Harbour, to the right Coal Barges on the Thames (). Between them is a head study by Van Gogh from his Nuenen period, which he later overpainted. The presence of the Boggs paintings in the brothers’ apartment, and Van Gogh’s decision to incorporate them into his portrait, both point to his appreciation of these works. They also suggest his satisfaction at having arranged an exchange with an artist who, at that moment, enjoyed the greater success.
In Jongkind’s footsteps
Although Goupil began selling Boggs’s work only from 1882, the artist had already settled in Paris in 1876, where he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and briefly trained in the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). In 1872, four years before moving to Paris, he had begun his career in New York at the age of seventeen as a wood engraver for the magazine Harper’s Weekly, and contributed to Harper’s American editions of the works of Charles Dickens.
After his training in Paris, Boggs increasingly turned to painting en plein air. From 1877 he often travelled to the Normandy coast, following in the footsteps of, among others, the Dutch landscape painter Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891). Although there is no concrete evidence that Jongkind and Boggs knew one another, it is reasonable to assume that Boggs was well acquainted with Jongkind’s work and that it exerted considerable influence on him. Boggs’s growing interest in landscape – particularly his preference for the Normandy coast – and his progressively freer handling of the brush are likely to have been informed by Jongkind’s example.
With his fairly loosely painted landscapes and city views, Boggs made his name at the Paris Salon where his work was shown every year between 1880 and 1890. His talent did not go unnoticed: in 1882 the French state purchased his Place de la Bastille en 1882 (1882) and displayed it at the Musée du Luxembourg. The following year it was joined by Port d’Isigny (Calvados) (1882–83) and La Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, en 1883 (1883).
In 1883 Boggs spent some time in London, where he painted views of the Thames. An exhibition of his work was mounted at the London branch of Goupil, titled Sketches in Oil and Watercolour. It comprised around forty to fifty studies, mainly of Dutch and French landscapes, executed in both watercolour and oil. It is likely that Boggs produced the painting Coal Barges on the Thames during this stay in the English capital. One reviewer of the exhibition reported that Boggs ‘is going to turn his attention to the city, and produce a large picture of some characteristic bit for the next year’s Salon. Mr Boggs has a special fancy for grey effects, which he will not be at a loss for in London just now.’ Coal Barges on the Thames accords with this report, although it seems unlikely that Boggs intended it for the Salon, as, after all, such a piece would have conveyed a different level of ambition in terms of dimensions and finish.
With Coal Barges on the Thames, Boggs captured the sombre atmosphere of nineteenth-century industrial London with remarkable acuity. Several coal barges navigate the choppy waters of the Thames. Their dark silhouettes stand out against the grey sky, while heavy plumes of smoke rise from the ships’ funnels. The sky is filled with greenish and brown tones through which Boggs vividly evoked the so-called ‘pea soup fog’, a relatively recent phenomenon of dense smog caused by air pollution from the large-scale burning of coal in industry and households. Boggs painted the work with dynamic, loose brushwork, eschewing subtle details. Even so, he evidenced striking technical mastery, particularly in the depiction of the water. He introduced highlights around the vessel in lighter paint, effectively foregrounding the hulking craft from the dark river. By employing a lighter ground and letting it show through the darker paint, Boggs broke up the prevailing darkness in several passages.
Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Alexander Reid, c. 1887, oil on panel, 41 × 33 cm, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, Oklahoma, Aaron M. and Clara Weitzenhoffer Bequest, 2000
In the course of working on this piece, Boggs varied the way in which he applied his paint. The passages of sky, for instance, are laid in thinly, with paint that appears partially dried, while the water around the barge is built up with heavier impasto. This heightens the effect of restless, turbulent water. Using a finer brush, he articulated the barge in greater detail, ensuring that this area of the composition draws the eye.
Tiny holes are visible in the corners of the canvas, indicating that it was once secured with drawing pins. Boggs probably fixed the canvas to a panel or to the lid of a paint box in order to work on it in situ. His other painting, Honfleur Harbour, which is almost identical in size to Coal Barges on the Thames, has similar holes in nearly the same places. This suggests that Boggs used the same method on different excursions when producing his plein-air compositions.
With his view of the Thames, Boggs followed in the footsteps of artists such as James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) and Claude Monet (1840–1926), for whom the river was a favourite subject – particularly the effects of the smog that so often hung above the water. Whistler used this phenomenon to create countless atmospheric, subdued ‘symphonies in grey’. Monet first painted the river in 1870, and between 1899 and 1904 produced entire series devoted to the Thames. While Coal Barges on the Thames is akin to work by Whistler in terms of its colour palette – such as Nocturne: Grey and Gold, Westminster Bridge (c. 1871–72) – its brushwork is quite different. Whereas Whistler’s delicately applied paint lent his compositions a sense of stillness, Boggs’s painting is markedly more dynamic, showing greater affinity with the work of Claude Monet.
Other works that Boggs produced during his stay in London, such as On the Thames () and Ships on the Thames (), are markedly lighter and fresher in tone than Coal Barges on the Thames, and are therefore stylistically closer to Jongkind’s example. In keeping with Jongkind’s work, and with the long-standing tradition of Dutch landscape painting, the horizon in these two works is set much lower than in Coal Barges on the Thames, lending them a more classical appearance.
Although the more experimental high horizon of Coal Barges on the Thames may have appealed to Van Gogh, it was likely the sombre atmosphere and raw realism that resonated the most. While conceived as a landscape, the painting also signals a certain naturalist engagement. It can be read as an attempt to convey the harsh lot of a coal bargeman on the Thames, contending not only with the river’s rough waters but also with London’s smog. Seen in this light, the work may have appealed to Van Gogh for the same reasons he admired naturalist painters such as Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850–1924) and Honoré Daumier (1808–1879). Moreover, its dark mood – in which the labourer seems almost to merge with his working environment – is not far removed from Van Gogh’s depictions of agricultural workers in Drenthe and Brabant, such as Two Women in the Peat (1883) and The Potato Eaters (1885).
Frank Myers Boggs, On the Thames, 1883, oil on canvas, 98.4 × 130.8 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence
In addition, the association with the grimness of nineteenth-century London would have reminded Van Gogh of the illustrations Gustave Doré (1832–1883) created for London – A Pilgrimage. In the book’s 180 engravings, Doré captured the raw realities of working-class life in the city. Van Gogh waxed lyrical about the publication, calling it ‘wonderfully beautiful and noble in sentiment’. While he did not own the book himself, he did keep several prints after Doré’s illustrations, such as Evening on the Thames (Le soir sur la Tamise) (), clipped from magazines.
Finally, Coal Barges on the Thames – the only painted image of London in the Van Gogh brothers’ collection – would have stirred memories of Vincent’s time in the city, from May 1873 to October 1874, when he worked for the London branch of Goupil.
Honfleur Harbour
The other Boggs in the museum’s collection, Honfleur Harbour, was painted during one of his many trips to Normandy. It is among the dozens of canvases he produced in the region, among them The Harbour at Honfleur () and Bassin d’Honfleur (). Owing to its favourable position at the mouth of the Seine, in the nineteenth century the port of Honfleur was a lively and important centre for both fishing and trade. More important for Boggs, however, was the town’s picturesque character. For decades it had been a magnet for painters: among those who preceded Boggs were Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), Eugène Boudin (1824–1898), Monet and Jongkind.
Boggs painted the harbour at low tide, when the sea had retreated so far that large areas lay exposed. This striking spectacle was recorded not only by Boggs but also by artists such as Boudin and Jongkind, as seen in the latter’s Port of Honfleur at Evening (1863, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Today a lock prevents the water in Honfleur’s harbour from dropping so low.
In the foreground, a lone sailing boat appears to have slipped out ahead of the ebb: Boggs rendered its sail with a single, deft brushstroke. Further back in the harbour, a steamship rides at anchor, its funnel billowing thick plumes of smoke that seem to merge with the clouds above. The presence of the steamship is emblematic of the transformations the harbour underwent during the nineteenth century.
As in Coal Barges on the Thames, Boggs varied his application of paint extensively – some areas are laid in thinly, while others are built up in thick impasto. He again employed the strategy of drawing attention to a particular element by rendering it in greater detail. The town itself is delineated with a firm yet fine brush, whereas other passages – the sky and the quay at lower left – are handled more loosely with a broader brush. Boggs also worked wet-in-wet, evident in certain impasto strokes where the pigments intermix to produce a marbled effect. The brisk execution and free, loose handling once more indicate that the painting was made entirely outdoors. As with Coal Barges on the Thames, both the signature and the dedication to Van Gogh were applied once it became evident that Boggs intended to give the work to him as part of an exchange.
Theo undoubtedly took pleasure in having Boggs’s Normandy plein-air study on the wall of his apartment. Of the two paintings, this was likely the one that appealed to him most. Its slightly conservative Impressionist manner, for example, aligned well with Victor Vignon (1847–1909), whose work Theo had purchased a few years before the exchange. In the meantime, his taste had grown more modern, shaped by his increasing contact with Impressionists such as Monet and Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), by his expanding trade in their work, and by Vincent’s arrival in Paris, which brought new connections and fresh impetus.
Djalma Taihuttu
January 2026