View of the port of Bordeaux from the Salinières

This view of Bordeaux is taken from the same vantage point as Joseph Vernet's Vue de Bordeaux prise du côté des Salinières (Musée de la Marine, Paris; see F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Joseph Vernet: Peintre de marine (1714-1789) I, Paris, 1926, p. 88, no. 692, fig. 159). That well-known view was one of two topographical studies of Bordeaux that Vernet exhibited at the Salon of 1759, and formed part of Les ports de France, commissioned by Louis XV.

Given the prototype, it is likely that the present painting is by French artist working in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, and not an Italian working in the circle of Giacomo van Lint, as the artist has traditionally been identified.