PAINTINGS
Boudin, Eugene Louis
France (1824 - 1898)
Trouville Harbor
c. 1888
Oil on wood panel
8 1/16 x 10 9/16 in. (20.5 x 26.8 cm) board size; 17 1/4 x 19 5/8 x 3 1/2 in. (43.8 x 50 x 9 cm) frame size
Horace C. Henry Collection
FA 26.11

Eugène Boudin, called “the King of the Skies” by painter Camille Corot, created over 4,000 paintings and 7,000 drawings throughout his artistic career. Focusing on sea- and landscapes near his hometown of Honfleur in Normandy, France, Boudin was extremely fond of working outdoors, as seen in this particular seascape of Trouville Harbor, a French seaside resort on the English Channel. It was Boudin’s love of plein air painting that influenced many of the artists succeeding him, including Impressionist Claude Monet.

Boudin’s broken brushstroke and acute awareness of light and air, readily apparent in seascapes such as Trouville Harbor, illustrate how great an influence he had on his unofficial pupil, Claude Monet, whom he met in 1858. Although he exhibited several works in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, Boudin’s technique was very different from those of the emerging Impressionist group, and from Monet’s in particular. While Monet captured atmosphere, light, and movement through the division of color and the application of “pure” pigments, Boudin used contrasting colors within his light-toned and overall gray palette to achieve similar momentary effects. And while Monet was known to paint his family and those closest to him, Boudin kept his distance from his human subjects, rendering them as rather anonymous figures. In spite of these differences, it is obvious that Boudin played an enormous role in Monet’s development as an artist. Monet himself stated, “if I have become a painter, it is entirely due to Eugène Boudin.” (Jean Selz, E. Boudin, New York, 1982). -- Label copy for 150 Works of Art, October 1, 2005 to February 26, 2006.