Eugène Boudin

Born in 1824, Eugène Boudin was an important precursor to Impressionism. Eschewing a studio practice, he was one of the first artists to paint en plein air, setting up his easel most famously around the northern coastline of France as he worked to capture ‘the simple beauties of nature’. Ever prolific — he created over 4,000 paintings and more than 7,000 watercolours, drawings and pastels — Boudin advanced a new type of landscape painting, one that was fundamentally tied to contemporary life.

Boudin spent his childhood first in Honfleur and then Le Havre, both in Normandy. He left school in 1836 to assist in a printer’s shop, before working for the stationer Alphonse Lemasle. In 1844, Boudin and his colleague Jean Archer opened their own stationary store where they also sold art supplies.

It is not known when Boudin began his own art practice, but in 1845, he showed some of his work to Jean-François Millet. Two years later, Boudin left for Paris, eventually receiving a three-year grant to study painting in the French capital. For the rest of his life, he would split his time between Paris, spending the winter in his studio, and elsewhere in France where he would paint, weather permitting, directly from nature.

Like the future Impressionists, Boudin sought to depict climatic effects: to capture, for example, a fleeting shadow or coastal breeze. His commitment to the landscape genre never wavered. His choice of motif was bound up with his love of the sea, and he set many of his most famous paintings along the Normandy coast — in Deauville, Étretat, and the beach at Trouville, among others — as well as in Brittany. Yet these were compositions rooted in the world, and against the dramatic waves and sandy beaches, Boudin painted families, society women and the many people he encountered.

In 1858, Boudin met Claude Monet, then just a teenager, and encouraged the young artist to join him painting outdoors. The two went on to develop a close friendship and a lifelong correspondence and both appreciated each other’s practice. Monet in particular admired Boudin’s harmonious tonalities and the manner in which he approached the atmosphere’s conditions, later referring to the elder artist as ‘my Master’.

Boudin’s paintings were regularly exhibited at both the Paris Salon and, from 1890, the Salon of La Société National des Beaux-Arts. His work was also included in smaller exhibitions around the country, and beginning in the 1880s, Boudin was one of the artists that the acclaimed dealer Paul Durand-Ruel showed in Britain and the United States. It wasn’t until 1888, however, that the French government began to purchase his works, and in 1892, the artist was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Diagnosed with stomach cancer, Boudin nevertheless continued to work. Owing to his declining health, he sought warmer climes in the South of France. Though he enjoyed the bright sunshine along the Mediterranean, he continued to express his preference for windy Normandy. Boudin died at his home in Deauville in 1898.