Marcel Dreyfus Dyf (1899-1985), was a French landscape, portrait and still life painter who painted in the impressionist style.  This watercolour, with wash, is typical of Dyf.  He was a prolific painter of estuary scenes, with boats and landscape beyond.  This picture may have been a study for a larger work, although it is very well finished and presented as a completed work in it's own right.  It remains in it's original frame with an incription on the reverse side from his wife Claudine - which states that it is a gift to a friend.  It is therefore most probably that it was a personal possession of the artist and then gifted.