The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of June 4, 2026

A horizontally oriented etching and aquatint depicts a Parisian street on a wet day. In the foreground, several people with medium-light skin tones stand on a glistening road, one leaning on a long-handled tool. Horse-drawn carriages and loosely sketched figures populate the middle ground beside tall, shadowy buildings. A plume of dark smoke rises from a background chimney into a hazy sky filled with dense, horizontal strokes. The scene is rendered in charcoal gray.

Winter Morning on the Quays

c. 1880
(French, 1847–1898)
Image and Plate: 25.2 x 34.8 cm (9 15/16 x 13 11/16 in.); Mount Plate: 26.2 x 36.3 cm (10 5/16 x 14 5/16 in.)
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Félix Buhot referred to the decorative borders of his prints as “symphonic margins.”

Description

In this print, Félix Buhot depicted a Parisian street scene transformed by the ephemeral effects of weather and natural light. The artist presented a cab station on a wet and rainy day alongside the regular apartment buildings that resulted from Haussmannization. Pedestrians and a police officer populate the scene, evoking the spontaneous moments recorded by the Impressionists around the time of the print’s creation. Buhot was known in particular for his technical aptitude in etching and used a complex combination of techniques to produce the dense blacks and textured marks of the print. He often printed few impressions in a large number of states to create a sense of rarity, and the example here is exemplary of this practice, with the composition tipped down by the artist to a larger sheet with an embossed border, effectively creating a unique work from a reproductive process.
  • {{cite web|title=Winter Morning on the Quays|url=false|author=Félix Hilaire Buhot|year=c. 1880|access-date=04 June 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2025.182