1824 -1898 · Marines, Normandy beaches and precursor of impressionism

Mobile skies, ports, Trouville beaches and worldly silhouettes make Eugène Boudin a master of the atmosphere and a decisive initiator of outdoor painting.

Eugène Boudin was born in Honfleur in 1824 into a family of sailors. Based in Le Havre, he first worked in a stationery and framing shop frequented by passing artists. Jean-François Millet, Constant Troyon, Thomas Couture and Eugène Isabey encouraged him to paint. A municipal scholarship allowed him to study in Paris, but Boudin soon preferred the Normandy coasts and direct observation. He tirelessly noted the shape of the clouds, the direction of the wind, the reflections of the water and the rapid variations of light. He tirelessly noted the shape of the clouds, the direction of the wind, the reflections of the water and the rapid variations of the light. From the 1860s, Trouville and Deauville offered him a new subject: elegant crinolines, bathers, walkers and casinos first seaside resorts. These little colorful figures always remain subject to the immensity of the sky. In Le Havre, Boudin advised the young Claude Monet and introduced him to outdoor work; Monet recognized the fundamental importance of this learning. Boudin exhibited at the Salon, participated in the first impressionist exhibition in 1874 and traveled to Brittany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the South. His touch became more and more free without renouncing meteorological precision. Died in Deauville in 1898, he bequeathed to the Louvre nearly six thousand drawings, pastels and watercolors, an exceptional memory of a life devoted to the atmosphere. The "Eugène Boudin" selection notably highlights look At the beach in Trouville and Bathers on Trouville beach. His reading favors the material.

Boudin never treats the sky as a background: he makes it the true architecture of the painting, the one which regulates the sea, the sails, the dresses and time.