© Estate of Alfred Cohen 2020

In this construction, made during Cohen’s final year, he recalled his arrival in Europe exactly 50 years earlier, sailing (with his first wife, Virginia) on the “Queen Elizabeth” in October 1949. It had been a rough crossing, on the tail end of a hurricane and when the British liners stopped first in France, before docking at Southampton, Cohen peered out of the porthole – to be greeted by the tugboat from Cherbourg – his first sight of Europe.