The beach

Honfleur, Le Havre and the more fashionable Trouville are among the handful of French coastal sites celebrated in the art of Eugene Boudin. A devotee of seascape, it is proper to refer to him as a marine painter. Yet Boudin is really a painter of air. In everything he produced air predominates. It fills his tiny compositions like the wind filling the crinolines of his female figures. Encouraged by Jean Millet, he trained for a time with Isabey, though neither of these established figures could be said to have formed his style. Indeed in some ways, Boudin was more influential than influenced. Monet, for example, revered him. Boudin's impressionist affiliation was so strong that he exhibited at the first of the movement's group shows in 1874.

AGNSW Handbook, 1999.