Towards the end of his life crowned with success, Boudin adventured down new paths, expressly leaving his painting with a sketch-like quality. Boats and Breakwater belongs to the series of Boudin's final works and, among these, to a more radical set that moves towards a certain form of abstraction in which the painting abandons the subject and exists solely through the energy of brushstrokes, tones and values.
 
Very similar to an entire series of works executed in Trouville and Deauville between 1894 and 1897, Boats and Breakwater may also have been produced in Trouville, although it remains difficult to formally identify the location. In the scenes painted in Trouville, Boudin liked to position himself at the far end of the channel, facing the entrance to the port, so that the landscape was often framed to the left and right by two jetties that cannot be seen in this particular piece. A single jetty stretches across most of the horizon, and yet it is indeed depicting one of the modest Normandy fishing harbours, as evinced by the small fishing boats in the foreground and the detail of the boat bringing the fishermen back to the quay.
 
This scene interpreted countless times by Boudin becomes a pretext here for a rapidly captured composition in which the sky blends into the sea using the same tones of blue, lilac, pink and white. Only the effects of the sails on the water, done in long hatch-like marks of bronze green paint, give a horizontal flow to the calm water of the basin, contrasting with the turbulent sky, "dappled" with clouds. The sails, done in blocks of colour, punctuate the composition and tie the space to the sea. The entire piece is bathed in the same rosy, transparent light. Boudin "captures the movement of things at the same time as their shape and colours: the rising cloud, the shimmering water, the sail shining in the sun, the passing boat, and he offers a synthesis of the elements and beings in action."