In bootstrap 4.1, the w-100 class is required along with img-fluid for images smaller than the page to be stretched:
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<img class="img-fluid w-100" src="#" alt="" />
</div>
</div>
see closed issue: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/20830
(As of 2018-04-20, the documentation is wrong: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.1/content/images/ says that img-fluid applies max-width: 100%; height: auto;” but img-fluid does not resolve the issue, and neither does manually adding those style attributes with or without bootstrap classes on the img tag.)