id: 153388 accession number: 1986.73 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1986.73 updated: 2024-03-26 01:59:59.951000 View of Bordeaux, from the Quai des Chartrons, 1874. Eugène Boudin (French, 1824–1898). Oil on fabric; framed: 80.5 x 115.5 x 10 cm (31 11/16 x 45 1/2 x 3 15/16 in.); unframed: 54.7 x 89.5 cm (21 9/16 x 35 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund and Gift of Mrs. Dudley S. Blossom, Jr. 1986.73 title: View of Bordeaux, from the Quai des Chartrons title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1874 creation date earliest: 1874 creation date latest: 1874 current location: creditline: John L. Severance Fund and Gift of Mrs. Dudley S. Blossom, Jr. copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: oil on fabric 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: 80.5 x 115.5 x 10 cm (31 11/16 x 45 1/2 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 54.7 x 89.5 cm (21 9/16 x 35 1/4 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Signed lower right: E. Boudin / Bordeaux 1874 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review for 1986 opening date: 1987-02-04T05:00:00 Year in Review for 1986. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 4-March 15, 1987). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': "Exposition des oeuvres d'Eugène Boudin. École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (1899).", 'opening_date': None} --- PROVENANCE (Boudin sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Feb. 28, 1877, no. 30) 1 date: footnotes: *
1 A painting titled "Vue de Bordeaux" that matches the dimensions of the Cleveland picture appears in this sale of works by Boudin.
citations: Aurélien Scholl [1833-1902], Paris 1 date: footnotes: *
1 Scholl was the lender of the Cleveland picture to a Boudin exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1899.
citations: (Sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 17, 1921 (no. 52), probably sold to Galerie Allard & Noël) date: footnotes: citations: (Probably Galerie Allard & Noël, Paris) 1 date: footnotes: *
1 The annotated copy of this catalogue held by Hôtel Drouot indicates that the buyer of the Boudin was “Allard.”  This notation likely refers to Galerie Allard et Noël, Paris, which appears in the provenances of several other paintings by Boudin, including one currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (67.906).  Schmit’s Boudin catalogue raisonné lists “Gérard, Paris” following the 1921 sale in this painting’s provenance.  Gérard may refer to Félix Gérard, a dealer who lent a Boudin to the 1899 exhibition in which the CMA painting appears.  More likely, “Gérard” may be Raphael Gérard, a dealer who held a Boudin retrospective exhibition in 1937 and who bought and sold a number of works by the artist.  Raphael Gérard also appears following Galerie Allard & Noël in the provenance of a Boudin currently at the MFA Boston. Although this connection between Allard & Noël and Raphael Gérard does strongly suggest that the Cleveland picture passed through the latter’s hands, no primary documentation has been found that situates the painting with any dealer or collector by the name of Gérard.  Following Gérard, Schmit includes Galerie Abels, Cologne, in the provenance, but again, thus far no confirmation that this dealer had the CMA painting has been located.
citations: (E. J. van Wisselingh & Co., Amsterdam) 1 date: footnotes: *
1 The CMA painting is no. 4 in the 1950 van Wisselingh & Co. exhibition, Maîtres français XIXme et XXme siècles.  Following van Wisselingh, the Schmit catalogue raisonné lists dealer C. R. A. van Stolk, from Bergen, the Netherlands; no documentation of his involvement in the sale of the Cleveland Boudin has been found to date. 
citations: Private collection, Washington, D.C., to Wildenstein & Co. date: footnotes: citations: (Wildenstein & Co., New York, sold to Emily Blossom) date: footnotes: citations: Emily Blossom [1913-1991], Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art date: footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Joseph Baillio, letter to Roger Diederen, Sept. 9, 1996, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: Joseph Baillio, letter to Roger Diederen, Sept. 9, 1996, in CMA curatorial file. page number: url: E.J. van Wisselingh & co. Maîtres français XIXme et XXme siècles, 17 juillet-9 septembre 1950. Amsterdam: E.J. Van Wisselingh & Co, 1950. page number: url: Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris: Schmit, 1973. page number: url: Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux modernes. June 17, 1921. page number: url: Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux modernes. June 17, 1921. page number: url: Exposition des oeuvres d'Eugène Boudin, du 9 au 30 janvier 1899... [Paris], Ecole des beaux-arts. Paris (64 rue Amelot): Typ. Morris père & fils, 1899. page number: url: Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris: Schmit, 1973. page number: url: Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux modernes, aquarelles, dessins. Feb. 28, 1877. page number: url: Coe, Nancy. The History of the Collecting of European Paintings and Drawings in the City of Cleveland. Thesis M.A. Oberlin College, 1955. page number: Reproduced: v. 2, p. 6 url: Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris, France: Schmit, 1973. page number: Reproduced: p. 968, vol I url: Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1986." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXIV, no.2 (February, 1986): 38-79. page number: Reproduced: p. 53; Mentioned: p. 52, p. 62, no. 31 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, Louis, and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: v. 1, p. 70-72 url: Brady, Peter. The Spirit of Impressionism. London, United Kingdom: Richard Green, 2003. page number: Reproduced: pl. 3 url: Brady, Peter. The Spirit of Impressionism. London: Richard Green, 2003. page number: Reproduced: pl. 3 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.73/1986.73_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.73/1986.73_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.73/1986.73_full.tif