Ports are where a city shows what it trades, whom it hires and whom it fears. On this page, a single Dutch ship that sailed to Japan only once is enough to date a folding screen, and a peaceful river fleet turns out to be an army. Twelve harbor paintings from 1599 to 1912, from twelfth place to first.
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How These Were Chosen
A harbor is the place where a city meets everything that comes from elsewhere. Ships arrive and leave, goods pile up on the quays, and the people who load them, sell them or simply watch them do it in plain sight.
That is why painters keep coming back to ports. A single view holds water, sky, buildings and a crowd, and the boats themselves say what the port lived on: fishing, freight, spices, war or passengers.
The rule for this list follows from that. Each painting had to show a port at one precise moment, busy or idle, and make clear who was using it then: traders, a fleet, dockhands hired by the day, travelers coming in from the sea.
12. Kawahara Keiga, View of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay (about 1836)
In the foreground of this view of Nagasaki, a small island shaped like a fan floats on the bay under Dutch flags. The rest of the harbor unfolds behind it across eight silk panels, seen as if from a hill above the water.
The island sits at the front for a reason. Its name was Deshima, and from 1639 until 1854 it was the post from which the Dutch held the only Western trading rights in Japan. Kawahara Keiga, a painter based in Nagasaki, made this folding screen around 1836.
Few painters could have shown the island from the inside, and Keiga was one of them. In 1811 he was appointed official painter to the Dutch post, a position that came with the rare right to walk onto the island freely. There he saw European pictures, and from them he borrowed the linear perspective he used to lay out the bay.
The date of the screen comes from a single ship. The Dutch vessel riding close to the island has been identified as the Marij en Hillegonda. She came to Japan only once, in 1836, so the picture was made that year or shortly after.
Keiga did not stop at the Dutch. Farther into the bay, off the Chinese quarter, two junks lie at anchor, painted with the same care, and with them a second foreign trade shares the harbor.
At a Glance
Artist: Kawahara Keiga (1786 to about 1860), Japanese
Painted: About 1836 or shortly after
Medium: Ink and pigments on silk, eight panel folding screen
Size: 171 × 470 cm (67.3 × 185 in)
Where to see it: Wereldmuseum Leiden (formerly Museum Volkenkunde), Netherlands
11. Paul Signac, The Port of Saint-Tropez (1901 to 1902)
On the near quay of Saint-Tropez, a small harbor on the Mediterranean coast of France, fishermen work among barrels and nets. Across the water rise houses and a bell tower, and ships lie between the two shores. Paul Signac was at work on the canvas in February 1902 when he wrote to the critic Félix Fénéon. Instead of describing the view, he packed the whole harbor, boats and all, into a single line of words.