Eugène Boudin: 8 works

'Born in Honfleur and schooled in Le Havre, Eugène Boudin (1824--1898) visited Brittany for the first time in 1855 and travelled there regularly for the next three years.'

'Although Boudin thought of his still lifes as nothing more than "dining room pictures," these works have an impressive, somber nobility. They are also historically significant, since it was due to Boudin's example that Monet painted still lifes in the 1850s, and the Impressionists would continue the interest in this subject.'

'Indeed in some ways, Boudin was more influential than influenced. Monet, for example, revered him.'

'Here he has chosen a relatively low angle leaving the sea barely visible but accentuating the feeling of the wind, into which the figures and the little black dog in the foreground are leaning. The sense of a scene snatched from life, reinforced by vibrant light effects, makes Eugène Boudin a forerunner of Impressionism, and indeed, it was he who introduced Monet to open air painting when the latter was only seventeen.'

'Between 1860 and 1896, Boudin executed nearly three hundred paintings on the theme of these "crinoline" beaches.'

'Boudin's beach scenes were commercially successful, but his attitude towards his subjects appears to have been ambivalent. On one occasion, he even described such gatherings of tourists as a "frightful masquerade."'

'Boudin was not an animal painter and the cow was not the main subject of his paintings.'

'Over the course of his career, Eugène Boudin regularly painted the colorful regattas that took place on the Normandy Coast and were major tourist attractions.'