About

The title of this work is a play on words that evokes an unexpected encounter during one of the improvised strolls around Cherbourg. A person who happened to come across this town advised us to make a detour to a picturesque village, Saint-Vaast-la Hougue. If we only knew that we would find there the Vieux Copain cutter, on which my grandfather made two trips to Greenland in the 1970s! Classified as a historical monument, Vieux Copain has been in dry dock since 2012 at the Bernard shipyard in Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue where it awaits the time of its restoration. You can see this cutter on the left in this painting. The title “The Return of the Old Friend” thus evokes both this touching page in family history and the serene atmosphere of a shipyard in the moonlight. The aligned boats seem to stay there, like old comrades united by a beautiful bond.

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