EUGÈNE BOUDIN | Scène de plage à Trouville

Jean Ventadour, Paris (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 11, 1874, lot 11)
N.G. Stevens, Europe (and sold: Christie's, London, June 14, 1912, lot 97)
M. Tempelaere, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Mlle. Hecht, Paris
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the above on April 5, 1929)
Elwood B. Hosmer, Montreal (acquired from the above on June 7, 1929)
Private Collection
Private Collection, London (by descent from the above and sold: Sotheby's, London, February 3, 2004, lot 31)
Richard Green Fine Paintings, London (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired from the above

Roslyn, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, The Sea Around Us, 2010, n.n. 

Robert Schmit, Eugène Boudin, vol. I, Paris, 1973, no. 507, illustrated p. 188

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Born in Honfleur and the son of a sailor, Boudin was drawn to the ports and coastline of northern France. The artist's practice of painting largely en plein air, enabled him to endow his works with an energetic immediacy and freshness. As Boudin inscribed in one his notebooks, “Beaches. Produce them from nature as far as is possible... things done on the spot or based on a very recent impression can be considered as direct paintings” (quoted in Gustave Cahen, Eugène Boudin, Sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris, 1900, p. 183). Boudin's art was an important source of inspiration for the next generation of artists, particularly the Impressionists. He was both a friend and mentor of Claude Monet, and is credited with having first shown him the importance of painting in the open air (see fig. 1). 

The present work is a beautiful early example of Boudin's favorite subject, fashionably dressed figures on the beaches of Trouville. Having settled in Paris after his marriage in 1863, in the ensuing decade, Boudin traveled every summer to Trouville, where he had found the inspiration to paint endless variations on the themes most dear to him. Jean Selz wrote: “What fascinated Boudin at Trouville and Deauville was not so much the sea and ships but the groups of people sitting on the sand or strolling along the beach: fine ladies in crinolines twirling their parasols, pompous gentlemen in top hats, children and little dogs playing on the sand. In the harmony of the colors of the elegant clothes he found a contrast to the delicacy of the skies” (Jean Selz, Eugène Boudin, New York, 1982, p. 57).

By the second half of the nineteenth-century Trouville had become a fashionable summer retreat for the French aristocracy, and their colorful costumes provided a subject to which Boudin returned throughout his career. Captivated by the picturesque dress of these elegant society figures, Boudin rendered them in quick, impressionistic brushstrokes highlighted by bright blue and red tones. What fascinated the artist was the contrast between these densely grouped men and women and the expanses of the sky against which they are depicted. Boudin's interest in capturing the fleeting effects of sunlight on sumptuous fabrics and the effect of a windy day on the flowing garments, so masterfully explored in the present painting, was to have a profound influence on the Impressionist.