The Beach at Trouville

Set against an atmospheric beach backdrop, this painting is made up of an array of small scenes, all taking place at the popular sea-side resort of Trouville: there are dogs running in the sand, a crowd of bathers taking in the view, small boats at sea with billowing sails, all depicted with sketchy brushstrokes beneath the majestic expanse of the humid, cloudless sky.

 Boudin is often considered a precursor of impressionism for his interest in natural phenomena, and his ‘sketchy’ style brushwork that is so evident here.  In fact, it was Boudin who introduced an 18-year-old Claude Monet to painting en plein air – and the two artists shared an interest in light and its possibilities, so evident in Monet’s Impressionist work.

 Born in Honfleur, and rightfully celebrated among the leading nineteenth-century French landscape and seascape painters, Boudin first came into contact with the art of painting through his work at a shop that sold stationery and artists’ supplies. By 27 he was a full-time painter, working mainly in the coastal town of Le Havre – a city that became closely linked with his oeuvre – and the fashionable towns of Trouville and Deauville, where he discovered one of his favourite themes: Parisian high society enjoying the new seaside resorts that were popular during the Second Empire. In fact, in this work the artist is revisiting a theme he painted extensively between 1863 and 1868: a time when he could often be seen sketching on the beach, depicting the fashionable ladies with their parasols and bathers in their dark swimsuits. It is this theme he is revisiting here – but the higher vantage point subjects the action on the sandy coast to the majestic view of the horizon, in a change of focus typical of the artist’s later years.