Eugène Boudin, 1824 - 1898
DEAUVILLE, LE BASSIN, c. 1880-85
Oil on panel
12 1/2 by 16 1/8 in., 32 by 41 cm
Private collection
Deauville was conceived for fashionable pleasures. It emerged from the dunes in the 1860s, thanks to the vision of one Dr Joseph Olliffe and his close friend, Emperor Napoleon III’s half-brother, the Duc de Morny. At the end of the 1850s, marshes lay between the sea here and a little slope-side village above.
Dr Olliffe convinced wealthy backers to invest in a major scheme to drain the marshes and create a resort from nothing. The resort was designed by architect Desle-François Breney, inspired by Baron Haussmann’s redevelopment of Paris. Aided by an all-important, brand-new railway line, the resort came into full bloom within just four years. Grand hotels in the Anglo-Norman timber-frame style, smart bathing facilities and a stylish racecourse catered to elegant Parisians. More on Deauville
Eugène Louis Boudin; 12 July 1824 – 8
August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors.
Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon
the sea and along its shores.
Born at
Honfleur, Boudin was the son of a harbor pilot, and at age 10 the young boy
worked on a steamboat that ran between Le Havre and Honfleur. In 1835 the
family moved to Le Havre, where Boudin's father opened a store for stationery
and picture frames. Here the young Eugene worked, later opening his own small
shop. In his shop, in which pictures were framed, Boudin came into contact with
artists working in the area and exhibited in the shop their paintings. At the
age of 22 he started painting full-time, and traveled to Paris the following
year and then through Flanders. In 1850 he earned a scholarship that enabled
him to move to Paris, although he often returned to paint in Normandy and, from
1855, made regular trips to Brittany.
In 1857/58
Boudin befriended the young Claude Monet, then only 18, and persuaded him to
give up his teenage caricature drawings and to become a landscape painte. The
two remained lifelong friends and Monet later paid tribute to Boudin’s early
influence. Boudin joined Monet and his young friends in the first Impressionist
exhibition in 1873, but never considered himself a radical or innovator.
Late in his life he returned to the south of
France as a refuge from ill-health, and recognizing soon that the relief it
could give him was almost spent, he returned to his home at Deauville, to die
within sight of Channel waters and under the Channel skies he had painted so
often. More
on Eugène Louis Boudin
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