Indeed, this unfavorable, distanced depiction of the U.S.S. Kearsarge in the previous watercolor is even more pronounced in Manet’s oil paint version of the very same work The Kearsarge at Boulogne, painted slightly later in 1864 (Wilson-Bareau, 50). In this later painting, the unfavorable presentation of the Kearsarge is greater emphasized by the ship’s distanced position in relation to the other objects in the seascape, further suggesting Manet’s “distancing” from his stated political beliefs and the contradiction between his politics in word and those in image. On this canvas, the fishing boat positioned in the right foreground relative to the distanced Kearsarge overwhelms the Union battleship: its arched and slightly tilted shape evokes sentiments of aggression and antagonism, as if the fishing boat itself is preparing to consume the hapless battleship on the left. The fishing boat does not, as Wilson-Bareau notes, “effectively balance Kearsarge” (Wilson-Bareau, 55), but rather contributes to a decided imbalance as the boat is comparatively much larger and much more powerful than the Kearsarge. This differentiation in size via perspective allows the fishing boat to effectively usurp whatever presence and virility that the Kearsarge had maintained. Instead, the battleship is rendered small, negligible, and consumed. The Union warship is no longer the cynosure of the painting: it is secondary in position and power. It is hardly the “impressive…victor of the battle of Cherbourg” (Wilson-Bareau, 58) as Wilson-Bareau hails Manet’s depiction of it in her exhibition catalogue, but rather is a “distant” concern. Manet portrays the ship in the distance, unfavorably, and suggests an antipathy toward the Union, and anti-imperialist, efforts – a political view that contradicts his established political opinion found in his earlier letters. Manet in this painting essentially utilizes the fishing boat, and, as we shall soon see, the remaining boats in the image, to neglect and abandon the political convictions he maintained in his words.
The remaining boats in the seascape further distance and undermine the Kearsarge, augmenting Manet’s unfavorable presentation of the Union and emphasizing the contradiction with his professed political views. As Wilson-Bareau and David Deneger note in their exhibition catalogue Manet and the Sea, all the other boats, including the fishing boat itself, “head toward the American warship” (Wilson-Bareau and Deneger, 66). The boats, in effect, are oppressing and overwhelming the American warship by advancing on it. In so doing, they push away the Kearsarge from the beholder and into the distance, negating the warship’s very existence. In this way, the sailboats do not affirm its presence, but rather seek to terminate it. There exists a distinct aversion, an opposition, to the Kearsarge’s incursion on their waters: an opposition that connotes Manet’s own “opposition” to the Kearsarge and the Union cause. Manet distances the warship from its sailboat-counterparts and in turn distances himself on the canvas from his political views in word.