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catalogue
Eugène Boudin was born in Normandy in 1824. He spent his childhood on the sea, working as the cabin boy on his
father’s cargo ship. This early exposure to the sea and skies of the French Coast was to form his primary focus as a painter
later in life. It was Boudin who would form the all important link between traditional French landscape and the start of
the Impressionist movement.
His early career consisted predominantly of painting outdoor sketches in the summer, which he would then
complete in his studio over the winter months. During this period he also painted genre scenes and still life but it
was the vast skies and seas of the Normandy Coast that he always returned to. In 1862 he began to paint the crowds
of fashionable tourists who flocked to the coast from Paris on summer weekends. To paint people on a beach, smartly
dressed and enjoying themselves was daringly modern. The Impressionists developed this subject in the coming decades,
but it marked Boudin out as distinctly avant-garde. By the middle of the 1850s he recognized the ‘falseness’ of painting
landscapes from memory and bean to paint almost exclusively en plein air a practice that was to be so influential on the
Impressionists. The immediacy of the work Boudin painted outdoors and the attention paid to the changing atmosphere
had a particular effect on the young Claude Monet, who first worked alongside him in 1856. He said, ‘…it was as if a
veil had been torn from my eyes. I had understood, had grasped what painting could be. Boudin’s absorption of his work,
and his independence, were enough to decide the entire future and development of my painting.’ 1
Although he had been exhibiting at the Paris Salon since 1959, he displayed little appetite for increasing his
profile and chose not to move to Paris permanently. By the late 1860’s he stopped painting the scenes of stylish figures
on the beach, and dedicated himself entirely to his coastal scenes. Despite this, his reputation was such that in 1874 he
was included in the first Impressionist exhibition and although he chose not to become part of the notorious group he
still exhibited with many of the artists.
Our painting depicts the mouth of the river Toques flanked by two jetties which form the entrance to Trouville
harbour. It was a favourite subject for Boudin (another version is in the National Gallery collection – The Entrance to
Trouville Harbour, 1888 and was the first ‘modern’ French work to be acquired for the State). Boudin captures his scene
on a blustery summer’s day. The tide is far out with the break water just visible on the horizon. The primary focus of
the painting is the fishing boat which rests, lazily on a sandbank. The immediacy and vibrancy with which he captures
the effect of bright sunlight on the boat’s deck and rigging demonstrate the ideals which Impressionism was to take
further, all rendered with rapid, short brushstrokes. More boats rest against the jetty walls, while a local tries his luck
at fishing on the left side of the river. Tourists with parasols amble on either side of the harbour toward the two brilliant
white lighthouses, all captured with quick, measured dabs of Boudin’s brush.
Blyth acquired this and the following painting from The Scottish Gallery in 1943. Although Alexander Reid had
introduced the Boudin to Scotland in the 1890s it seems that Blyth asked The Scottish Gallery to acquire these works on
his behalf. In the receipt it itemizes ‘packing’ and ‘forwarding’ of the pictures from London.
1 G. Jean-Aubry & Robert Schmit, Eugène Boudin, (New York Graphic Society, Greenwhich, 1968), p.27
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