id: 125091 accession number: 1946.71 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1946.71 updated: 2023-05-04 14:25:12.847000 The Beach at Deauville, 1864. Eugène Boudin (French, 1824–1898). Oil on wood panel; framed: 45.7 x 36.8 x 3.5 cm (18 x 14 1/2 x 1 3/8 in.); unframed: 34.7 x 26 cm (13 11/16 x 10 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Homer H. Johnson 1946.71 title: The Beach at Deauville title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1864 creation date earliest: 1864 creation date latest: 1864 current location: creditline: Gift of Mrs. Homer H. Johnson copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: oil on wood panel department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Eugène Boudin (French, 1824–1898) - artist Eugène Boudin is traditionally presented in literature as a self-taught artist, independent of the Parisian art world whose works, painted out of doors in a sketchy, light-hued style, foreshadowed impressionism.1 Recent scholarship has tempered this interpretation of the artist, but it conserves his importance to contemporaneous artistic concerns of modernity, the notion of "finish," the relationship between the French city and countryside, and the marketing of art works.2 Raised by parents who worked on steamers, Boudin grew up in Le Havre on the Normandy coast. At the age of twenty, he and an associate established their own framing and stationery shop where they regularly served artists. In 1847 Boudin went to Paris to study art and made contacts with artists such as Couture (q.v.), who helped him win a three-year study grant in 1850 from the municipal council of Le Havre, and Constant Troyon (1810-1865). But it was along the Normandy coast, not in Paris, where Boudin first met painters Ribot (q.v.) in 1851, Monet (q.v.) in 1858, and Courbet (q.v.) in 1859 and art critic Charles Baudelaire in 1859 and painted in a coarse realist style. Boudin spent each winter, roughly November to May, in Paris, working in his studio. He spent the summer season, lasting from two to five months, making pictures on the Normandy coast or in the Breton landscape. In 1860 he began to paint scenes of fashionable society at the beach resorts of Trouville (The Beach at Trouville, Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and Deauville. At first his work attracted little critical notice, but Baudelaire praised his pastels in a review of the 1859 Salon where Boudin made his debut.4 By 1869 Boudin and his art came to be identified with the Normandy coast.5 After 1870 Boudin increasingly turned away from beach resort subjects to focus on port and harbor views and fisherfolk scenes. In 1881 Boudin entered into a business relationship with the important Parisian art dealer Durand-Ruel, who provided him with a regular income for the rights to his entire production. When Durand-Ruel mounted a one-person exhibition of Boudin's works in 1883, the artist enjoyed financial and critical triumph. Boudin sold his first picture to the French state in 1886 (A Squall, Musée de Morlaix) and his second two years later (The Russian Corvette in the Eure Reservoir, Musée d'Agen). In 1892 he was decorated with the Legion of Honor. Extremely productive until the end of his life, Boudin left more than four thousand paintings and seven thousand works on paper, some of which he or his family bequeathed to the French nation and art museums of Le Havre and Honfleur. The reputation that Boudin quietly established is nowhere better evidenced than in the fact that the retro-spective exhibition of his work (January 1898) was held at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Boudin never set foot and which had fought, and failed, to privilege history painting over landscape and genre.
1. By 1883 art critic Gustave Geffroy had already pronounced that Boudin "is, together with Corot and Jongkind, one of the immediate precursors of Impressionism. He shows us that impenetrable black does not exist and that air is transparent." Cited in trans. in Hamilton 1992, 42.
2. See John House, "Boudin's Modernity," in Hamilton 1992, 15-23.
3. Courbet first visited Le Havre in 1841, the year he moved to Paris from Ornans. He returned at the time of the 1858 Salon du Havre, to which he contributed, and again in 1859. He is reported to have bought some of Boudin's paintings. In 1865 the two painters socialized together and painted side by side at Trouville.
4. The artist exhibited no pastels in the Salon, but Baudelaire might have seen them in the artist's studio or elsewhere. 5. Jules Castagnary, Salon de 1869, cited in trans. in Hamilton 1992, 59. --- measurements: Framed: 45.7 x 36.8 x 3.5 cm (18 x 14 1/2 x 1 3/8 in.); Unframed: 34.7 x 26 cm (13 11/16 x 10 1/4 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Signed in brown paint lower right corner: E. Boudin 1864 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2006-05-27T00:00:00 Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Beijing World Art Museum, China (May 26-August 27, 2006); Mori Art Center (September 16-November 26, 2006); Seoul Art Center, South Korea (December 22, 2006-March 28, 2007); Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, South Korea (April 7-May 20, 2007); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (June 9-September 16, 2007); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (February 15-June 1, 2008); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT (June 22-September 21, 2008); The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (October 12, 2008-January 18, 2009). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE Mr. Homer H. Johnson [1862-1960], and Mrs. Homer H. Johnson [1869-1957], Cleveland, OH, date: by 1921-1946 footnotes: citations: Mrs. Homer H. Johnson, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art date: 1946 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1946- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: Boudin evokes the feeling of wind by painting the fluttering blue dress, the beach walker leaning to the left, the whitecaps on the water, and the angle of the sails on the boat in the distance. digital description: wall description: During the 1860s, Boudin executed many paintings and watercolors representing well-to-do tourists and vacationers enjoying seaside resorts in Normandy, principally Trouville and Deauville. In this scene, the informally posed figures suggest a sense of relaxation and intimacy. The overturned chair in the foreground underscores the impression of a casually observed moment, as though a sea breeze or a quick departure by its former occupant has upended it. The majority of Boudin's small oil paintings of beach scenes of the 1860s were executed on wood panel. After laying down a thin white ground, Boudin seems to have begun painting directly, not drawing or laying in guidelines for the forms. The result is a freshness and airiness appropriate to a windy day at the beach. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Jean-Aubry, G., Robert Schmit, and Caroline Tisdall. Eugène Boudin. Greenwich, Conn: New York Graphic Society, 1968. page number: url: Schmit, Robert, and Eugène Boudin. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris, FR: Schmit, 1973. page number: Reproduced: no. 300; vol. 1 url: Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris, FR: R. Schmit, 1984. page number: url: Jean-Aubry, G., Eugène Boudin, and Robert Schmit. Eugène Boudin: [la vie et l'œuvre d'après les lettres et les documents inédits]. Neuchâtel, Suisse: Ides et Calendes, 1987. page number: url: Hamilton, Vivien. Boudin at Trouville. London, UK: John Murray in association with Glasgow Museums, 1992. page number: url: Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. page number: Reproduced: p. 20 url: d' Argencourt, Louise, and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: vol. 1, p. 65-67, no. 24 url: Lemonedes, Heather, Lynn Federle Orr, and David H. Steel. Monet in Normandy. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2006. page number: Reproduced: fig. 41 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1946.71/1946.71_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1946.71/1946.71_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1946.71/1946.71_full.tif