Eugène Boudin

Arnold & Tripp, Paris
Sale: Palais Galliera, Paris, December 5, 1968, lot A
Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Higgons (and sold: Sotheby's, London, April 30, 1969, lot 12)
Gabrial Sabet, Geneva (acquired at the above sale and sold by the estate: Sotheby's, London, December 7, 1998, lot 1)
Acquired at the above sale

Le Havre, Expositions de la Sociéte des amis des arts, Tableaux par Eugène Boudin et A. Gautier, 1979, no. 13
Jouy-en-Josas, Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Azur, 1993, n.n., illustrated in color in the catalogue

Robert Schmit, Eugène Boudin 1824-1898, vol. I, Paris, 1973, no. 1054, illustrated p. 369

On cradled panel. Panel is sound. There are a few tiny marks along the extreme bottom edge from prior frame rubbing. There is a one-centimeter hairline surface crack near the top of the left edge adn another two-centimeter hairline surface crack just below the center of the left edge. Surface is clean. Under UV light there are scattered strokes of inpainting around the perimeter to address prior frame abrasion as well as a few scattered strokes in the sky. There is also a two-inch horizontal hairline strok of pinpaitning just above the center of the left edge. A layer of varnish fluoresces somewhat unevenly throughout but no other inpainting is apparent. The work is in good condition overall and presents beautifully.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The painting at hand depicts a group of fisherwomen congregating on the beach at Berck, an old fishing harbor located in Northern France. Like the majority of the artist’s finest oils, the composition is an amalgam of human activity, of busy ports, of ships and vessels, of the unconquerable sea and an expansive sky, all tastefully combined to form a serious picture of harbor life in nineteenth-century France. When the artist’s first solo exhibition outside Paris was held in Boston’s Chase Gallery in 1890, a critic wrote in the Boston Post: “in the representation of harbor views Boudin has no rival. His skies are a joy to see and his vessels always painted with inimitable skill and perfect knowledge. In his pictures there is a good deal of movement. One feels the bustle of hurrying out of port, or into it. The vessels sway with wind and tide, and their rigging is drawn with fascinating truth and naiveté” (quoted in Peter C. Sutton, Boudin, Impressionist Marine Paintings, Boston, 1991, p. 16).

Indeed, such expertise in seascapes was derived from first-hand knowledge of and direct access to French ports. Born in the coastal town of Honfleur in 1824, Boudin lived in an environment that would make him intimately familiar with the goings-on of life as a sailor. His father was a fisherman and skipper of a small cargo boat while his mother served as a chambermaid on passenger vessels. While Boudin himself elected not to pursue a traditional maritime career, his early association ultimately allowed him to translate coastal imagery onto canvas in a manner that can certainly be described as natural and remarkable.

As Peter Sutton claims: “Boudin is now recognized as the most original French marine painter of the last century, achieving a mastery of his specialty equal to that of his English predecessors Constable, Bonington, and Turner, and to the accomplishments of France’s own Barbizon landscapists. Through his unprecedented pictorial responsiveness to the elusive magic of sea and sky, he became a chief progenitor of Impressionist landscape painting and greatly benefitted subsequent generations of marine painters… Today there is scarcely a major collection of nineteenth-century French paintings that omits the art of this self-effacing, circumspect but always beguiling intimist” (ibid., pp. 26-27).