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| Marine. Les Lamaneurs (Seascape. The Mooring men) 1887 |
It was with this painting that Eugėne Boudin, native of Normandy, obtained a gold medal at the World Fair of 1889, which saw the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The Marmottan Museum, in the West of Paris, is hosting an exhibition of around 80 works by Boudin, mainly oil paintings, with a few water colours and sketches, loaned by a private collector- Yann Guyonvarc'h, now resident in Switzerland. The collector fell in love with a Boudin painting of Deauville beach he saw at the Maastricht art show in 2007.
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| La Plage de Deauville (Deauville Beach) 5 October 1893 |
Nearly twenty years later, his Boudins number 300. The Commissaire of the exhibition, Laurent Manoeuvre, is a specialist on the artist and has written several books about Boudin's paintings. Boudin found a certain notoriety with his many beach scenes, showing ladies in crinolines enjoying the sea air. However, for the contemporary art market his works were too sketchy. Other -now less well known- artists like Boudin's friend Alexandre Lebourg produced similar works but with a more detailed finish.
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| Trouville beach scenes 1870s and 80s. |
Boudin tried to capture the first impression of a scene in the most direct manner and had a problem when potential buyers asked him to finish off his works. The following beach scene is fairly well defined, with certain features that recur in Boudin's paintings: dogs, an empty chair, beach huts and the ladies in their crinolines. Boudin had created a new genre, just as Watteau had done with his 'fêtes galantes' in the 18th century.
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| Réunion sur la plage (Meeting on the beach) 1866 |
The above work is thought to have been exhibited at the 1866 Salon.
Boudin himself had a preference for empty beaches, where the sea, sand and sky form the main subject of the painting, whether in calm or stormy weather. His small pastel studies of sea and sky, much in the fashion of John Constable before him, record the date, time and wind direction. The town of Le Havre, who gave a grant to Boudin to study in Paris, was never completely convinced by his style. Yet, the port of Le Havre inspired many of his seascapes:
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| Le Havre, une corvette russe dans le bassin de l'Eure (Le Havre, a Russian corvette in the Eure dock) 1885 |
Boudin was born in Honfleur, but his parents moved to Le Havre when he was 11 years old. He spent a lot of time as a child crossing the estuary between the two ports, as his mother worked as a maid and his father as a sailor on the ferry. Boudin's territory was the Normandy coast.
His preoccupations were always with portraying accurately sky and sea. His canvases were often two thirds sky and a third sea. Fellow painter Corot called Boudin the "king of the skies":
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Deauville, le rivage par gros temps (Deauville, the beach in stormy weather) 1890
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Boudin painted the following sunset at Etretat in the 1890s, when his style had become freer:
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| Etretat, la falaise d'Aval au soleil couchant (Etretat, the upstream cliff in the setting sun) 1890 |
It was Boudin who first introduced the young Claude Monet (aged 15) to open air painting. Monet always acknowledged his debt to Boudin. At the end of his life, interviewed by art critic Gustave Geoffroy, Monet said " I owe everything to Boudin" . The Marmottan possesses a beach scene by Monet which is included in the present show:
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Claude Monet: Sur la plage à Trouville (On the beach at Trouville) 1870
Musée Marmottan
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The Boudin and Monet families were in Trouville together in the summer of 1870. Monet differentiates himself from Boudin by using the large foreground figure of his companion Camille, but the background is in very much the style of his first master- small dashes of colour to represent the figures. A much later painting by Boudin echoes the Monet work:
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| Deauville, Juliette sous la tente (Deauville, Juliette under the tent) 1895 |
Juliette was the companion of Boudin's latter years, after he spent a sad period following the death of his Breton wife Anne-Marie. The red and white striped tent were no doubt the inspiration for the background colours of the present exhibition, giving it a feel of Normandy beaches.
The Yann Guyonvarc'h Collection covers all aspects of Boudin's artistic career, from his beach scenes to his many views of ports and his portraits of Breton peasants and interiors and his numerous cows. Boudin's attitude is exactitude- not anecdote. He famously said he portrayed a cow and a lady in a crinoline with the same passion! Here is one of his cow portraits:
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| Vaches au pâturage (Cows in the pasture) ca 1880-1885 Musée Marmottan |
The best place to see many paintings of cows by Boudin is the Le Havre Museum. The painter's brother, after Boudin's death in 1898, left most of the contents of Boudin's studio to them because the town of Le Havre had made Eugène a grant which enabled him to study for three years in Paris at the Arts School. Boudin himself had given them only two works.
Boudin painted 'dining room' pictures of still lifes for his bourgeois clients, but rarely flowers. There is one skilful painting of a modest bunch of flowers in this exhibition:
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Fleurs dans un vase (Flowers in a vase) ca 1856-60
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Boudin was largely self-trained. He gained lots of tips from artist friends who patronised the stationery and picture-framing shop he set up as a young man in Le Havre. Jean-Francois Millet, famous for his "Gleaners" in the Musée d'Orsay, advised his young friend not to give up a steady income to live from his painting, but Boudin was determined and at the age of 22 he did just that. Boudin never made a fortune from his works, but managed to survive, largely thanks to art dealer Durand Ruel, and eventually built a house on some land in Deauville, where he died, aged 74, facing the sea as he desired. A modest man, Boudin charged reasonable prices for his paintings, which industrialists or traders bought via his various merchants. His potential patrons encouraged him to paint views of different ports, leading Boudin to leave his beloved Normandy, for example for Brittany:
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| Portrieux, rivage et bateau à l'ancre (Portrieux, shore and boat at anchor) 1872 |
Boudin studied every detail carefully, usually making lots of preparatory sketches- over 6000 of them are now kept in the Louvre.
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| La Rade de Brest (Brest Harbour) 1870 |
The above painting was acquired by Ernest Hoschedé, future patron of the Impressionists and the man who bought "Impression, Sunrise" by Monet, which later became the most famous work in the Marmottan permanent collection and is to be seen in the basement:
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| Claude Monet: Impression Soleil levant (Impression Sunrise) 1872 |
It was painted by Monet in Le Havre, where he and Boudin lived. When shown at the first Independents exhibition in 1874, its vague images provoked a journalist to ironise on its vague title and this is the painting that is generally credited with the term "Impressionism". A sketch by Boudin from the Yann Guyonvarc'h Collection is an important historical document; it shows four painters at the Saint Siméon Inn: Jongkind, Emile van Marcke, Claude Monet and Jean-Alexis Achard:
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| A la ferme Saint-Siméon (At the Saint-Simeon farm) 1864-5 (?) pencil and watercolour |
Monet is the third one along, raising his glass and sporting a moustache. It was at the Saint-Simeon farm, halfway up the hill above Honfleur, where Boudin enjoyed his most convivial moments, along with other artists. The rent for a room and board was very reasonable and the views were good. The cooking by landlady Catherine Toutain was excellent. Sadly it is now completely rebuilt as a modern hotel and spa. Two panels decorated by artists who stayed at the inn remain, now in the Boudin Museum, Honfleur.
Monet's second important master, after Boudin, was Dutch painter Jongkind. Monet said "He trained my eye". The Marmottan exhibition contains one Jongkind seascape from the Yann Guyonvarc'h collection:
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| Johan Barthold Jongkind: L'Estuaire, Belgique (The Estuary, Belgium) 1867 |
Boudin visited Holland several times and admired the Dutch painters with their tradition of seascapes:
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Dordrecht, un quai du port (Dordrecht, one of the port's quaysides) 1884
Boudin's only history painting depicts a scene which he himself observed in 1871 in Antwerp. |
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| Anvers, la flotte anglaise vient prendre les restes des soldats enterrés dans la citadelle (Antwerp, the English fleet comes to collect the remains of soldiers buried in the citadel) 1871 |
In 1895, Boudin spent two months in Venice and painted around 75 canvases there. He called the series his "swansong". True to his analytical, sincere way of painting, he produced some delicate symphonies in grey, finding the light silvery rather than the gold he had seen in other artists' idealised landscapes.
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| Venise, navire à quai, canal de la Giudecca (Venice, ship at quayside, Giudecca canal) 1895 |
His last visits were to Brittany, where over the years he had painted lots of Breton scenes and ladies in their regional costumes:
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| Etude de Bretonne (Study of a Breton lady) ca 1857-62 |
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Marché en Bretagne (Market in Brittany) 1870
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Boudin's figures always have a sketchy feel about them. He did not feel it necessary to capture photographically all the details of a face; he simply translated them into splashes of colour. The washer women below are typical of this- Boudin is interested in capturing the instant and the light in sky and river:
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Laveuses au bord de la Touques (Washerwomen on the banks of the Touques)
12th August 1894 |
Boudin developed his own independent style, despite criticism. Chronologically, Boudin comes between the Barbizon painters and the Impressionists. He learnt from the former, including Troyon, Millet and Corot, and passed on his own conception of painting to Monet and others. Invited by Monet, Boudin presented several works at the first Independents Exhibition in 1874, although others like Corot and Manet preferred to stick to the official Salon. Boudin didn't claim to be of any particular school and maintained his independence. However, he may be called the "father of Impressionism", as does the exhibition title.
In his short autobiography of 1887, the painter simply states:
"I had perhaps a very small part in influencing the movement which took painting towards the study of light, open air and sincerity in reproducing sky effects."
"Eugėne Boudin, The Father of Impressionism- a private collection"
Exhibition at the Musée Marmottan Monet, from 9th April to 31stAugust, 2025
2 rue Louis Boilly, 75016 Paris
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm. Closed Mondays. Late opening until 9pm on Thursdays.
Metro: La Muette
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