id: 92480 accession number: 2020.116 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2020.116 updated: 2024-03-26 01:56:03.201000 Seascape with Open Sky, 1860. Eugène Boudin (French, 1824–1898). Pastel on gray wove paper mounted on thin paperboard; sheet: 21.5 x 28.7 cm (8 7/16 x 11 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.116 title: Seascape with Open Sky title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1860 creation date earliest: 1860 creation date latest: 1860 current location: creditline: Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: pastel on gray wove paper mounted on thin paperboard department: Drawings collection: DR - French type: Drawing 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: Sheet: 21.5 x 28.7 cm (8 7/16 x 11 5/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: description: cardboard watermarks: inscriptions: inscription: inscribed, lower left, in black chalk: - 1860 -; stamped, lower right, in blue ink: artist’s stamp [Lugt 828] translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection opening date: 2022-09-11T04:00:00 Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023). title: Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2023-01-20T05:00:00 Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-April 30, 2023). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': 'Rétrospective Eugène Boudin. Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts (June 7–19, 1996); Hiroshima Museum of Art (June 29–August 11, 1996); Kagoshima City Art Museum (August 21–September 16, 1996); Chiba City Art Museum (October 2–27, 1996); Shizuoka City Art Museum (November 10–December 15, 1996).', 'opening_date': '1996-08-11T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Eugène Boudin: Antesala del impresionismo. Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá (May 7–June 28, 1998); Suramericana de Seguros, Medellín, Colombia (July 5–August 30, 1998).', 'opening_date': '1998-06-28T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Eugène Boudin (1824–1898): Impressionist der ersten Stunde. Stiftung Langmatt Sidney und Jenny Brown, Baden (April 1–June 25, 2000); Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne (July 7–October 15, 2000).', 'opening_date': '2000-06-25T00:00:00'} --- PROVENANCE Studio of the artist [1824-1898; Lugt 828] date: 1860-1898 footnotes: citations: (his posthumous studio sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, March 20-21, 1899, probably one of nos. 243–54) date: 1899 footnotes: *
Given the presence of Boudin's studio stamp (Lugt 828), presumably one of numerous lots sold as "Étude de ciel (pastel)."
citations: Dr. Gustav Rau [1922-2002], Stuttgart date: ?-2002 footnotes: citations: (his sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, May 25, 2013, no. 650, for the UNICEF Germany Foundation, sold to Le Claire Kunst, Hamburg) date: 2013 footnotes: citations: (Le Claire Kunst, Hamburg, sold to Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Shaker Heights, OH) date: 2013-2014 footnotes: citations: Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Shaker Heights, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 2014-2020 footnotes: citations: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 2020- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Atelier Eugène Boudin: Catalogue des Tableaux, Pastels, Aquarelles et Dessins (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1899). page number: Mentioned: 62–63, nos. 243–54 (presumably one of numerous pastels sold as Étude de ciel). url: Rétrospective Eugène Boudin. Exh. Cat. Osaka: Musée d'Art de Kintsu, 1996. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 114, no. 3 url: Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898: Antesala del impresionismo. Exh. Cat. Bogotá: Museo Nacional de Colombia, 1998. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 20, no. 9 url: Koella, Rudolf. Eugène Boudin (1824-1898): Impressionist der ersten Stunde. Exh. Cat. Baden: Stiftung Langmatt Sidney und Jenny Brown, 2000. page number: Mentioned: p. 172, no. 65; Reproduced: p. 105 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2020.116/2020.116_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2020.116/2020.116_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2020.116/2020.116_full.tif