The Departure

In Adrien Hébert’s The Departure, one of his first works with the Montreal harbour as its subject, a great deal of space is devoted to natural elements, like the water, sky and colour reflections. But the predominance of industry is also rendered, as seen in the smoke that darkens the sky. The composition places the ships on the right outside the frame, illustrating how the painter’s eye aligned with that of the contemporary photographer, who decentralized their images and used cropping.