The first American owner of this painting, Sarah Heard, was the granddaughter of Captain John Heard Couch, famous pioneer and one of the founding fathers of Portland, Oregon. Captain Couch was born in Newburyport, MA and in 1845 he sailed around Cape Horn and eventually up the Willamette River; and helped to settle Portland. His legacy included the subdivision and plotting of 640 acres of northwest Portland, ‘Couch’s Addition’.

Eugène Boudin is best known for sparkling beach scenes painted in the Normandy resorts of Trouville and Deauville, a motif which he explored with great subtlety from the early 1860s to the mid-1890s. Boudin was born in Honfleur, the son of a harbour pilot, so the sea was in his blood. After studying in Paris from 1847 to 1854, he returned each summer to his beloved Normandy coast, sketching and painting from nature. Winters were spent in his Paris studio preparing works for exhibition.

This painting is a superb example of Boudin’s beach scenes from the early 1870s, when an impressionistic deftness and freedom of brushwork replaced the more deliberately modelled compositions earlier in the decade. Boudin was interested in the relationship of figures, sand, sea and sky, refracted in the dazzling coastal light. The sense of airiness and space in this small painting is palpable. Boudin controls the frieze-like composition of the figures by means of subtly interlocking hues of black, white (in the fashionable dress of the Parisian holidaymakers), cream, buff and subdued blues.

Boudin was a perfectionist who struggled all his life to find a sufficiently expressive technique to set down what he saw before him in nature. He wrote in his Journal: ‘Sometimes when I’m out walking….I look at this light which floods the earth, which quivers on the water and plays on clothes and it is frightening to think how much genius is required to capture so many difficulties….And then again I sense that the poetry is there and sense how to capture it’ (quoted in Vivien Hamilton, Boudin at Trouville, London 1992, p 90). Boudin stressed above all the importance of painting en plein air, a lesson which he passed on to Monet, who was his unofficial pupil in the 1850s. As a result, Boudin was invited to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.

The sleepy fishing village of Trouville was ‘discovered’ by the artist Charles Mozin in the 1820s and became the summer haunt of painters such as Isabey, Huet, Corot and Decamps, as well as writers including Dumas, Musset and Flaubert. In the 1840s it was developed as a fashionable bathing resort, boasting a smart Casino where high society gathered. Trouville became known as La reine des plages and ‘the summer boulevard of Paris’ and it was here that Boudin found a ready market for his charming beach scenes among Paris dealers and their sophisticated clientele.

Boudin, like his friend Claude Monet, was less fascinated by the landmarks of the Trouville waterfront or individual portraits than by the shapes that these fashionably-dressed holidaymakers made against the sea and sky. The billowing crinolins of the women, the outlandishly elaborate hats, the harmoniously echoing outlines of adjacent sunshades give a poetic rhythm to the family groups strung out along the strand.

EUGENE BOUDIN
Honfleur 1824 - 1898 Deauville

Eugène Boudin was one of the most important precursors of the Impressionists, his ever increasing critical acclaim rests on an unrivalled reputation as a master of beach and coastal scenes.

Born in Honfleur, Boudin was the son of a harbour pilot. In 1844, he opened a stationary and framing shop in Le Havre, where his clients included Thomas Couture, Eugène Isabey, Jean François Millet and Constant Troyon. Although Boudin had no academic training, he spent much time drawing, and the visiting painters greatly encouraged his innate artistic ability.

In 1847, Boudin went to Paris and devoted his attention to studying and copying Old Masters in the Louvre. In 1851, he was awarded a three year scholarship by the City of Le Havre. However, instead of pursuing indoor, academic studio work, Boudin was inspired by the idea of painting ' en plein air', and made a number of painting trips to Le Havre, Honfleur and other coastal towns in Northern France. He made his debut at the Salon in 1859, where his work was much admired by Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Courbet, and he was heralded by Corot as the 'king of the skies'.

It was Boudin who was to become Monet's first teacher, persuading him to paint out of doors, and in 1874, he was invited to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition.

He spent the rest of his career painting primarily around the coast of Le Havre, Honfleur and Trouville, inspired by the elegant society that peopled the sparkling coasts. Whilst painting at Trouville, he met the Dutch artist, Johan Barthold Jongkind, and, influenced by his boldness of technique, Boudin adopted a freer brushwork and brighter palette.

The exquisite sensibility of Boudin's work was recognised by the dealer Durand-Ruel, who organised exhibitions of his pictures in 1883, 1889, 1890 and 1891; in 1892, Boudin was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Works by Eugène Boudin can be found in the many museums world wide including: The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery, London; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Musée du Louvre, Paris and The Hermitage, St Petersburg.