BOUDIN, Eugène (Honfleur, 1824 – Deauville, 1898)
Eugène Boudin was born on 12 July 1824 in Honfleur, into a family where the father was “seafarer”, as appears in the 1831 population census of that town.
The family moved to Le Havre in 1835 and Eugène worked in a stationer’s and printer’s. He owned a shop between 1844 and 1846. When J. F. Millet passed through Le Havre he showed him his first drawings. Boudin attended courses at the Drawing School in Le Havre and, after obtaining a scholarship from the City Council, he took out a copyist pass at the Louvre where he studied on Flemish and French paintings (A. van de Velde, A. van Ostade, A. Watteau, etc.).
Having no resources, he led a rather difficult life. He painted still lifes and views of Le Havre and Honfleur and made his official debut in the 1859 Salon, where Baudelaire took notice of his pastel studies of skies.
From 1860, Boudin began to paint the beaches of Trouville and Deauville, and this subject brought him some fame. Although he felt strongly attached to his native Normandy, where he worked regularly, Boudin began to travel to Brittany in 1855 (his wife, Marie-Anne, was Breton), to the north of France, to Belgium and to the Netherlands from 1870 onwards. Invited by some collectors, he sojourned in Bordeaux between 1873 and 1880. Certain of finding milder weather in winter, Boudin travelled to the Midi in 1885, then regularly between 1890 and his death, and finally to Venice from 1892. He died in his villa in Deauville on 8 August 1898.
Boudin remains, in the mind of the public, the painter of beaches and sea shores. Courbet, Corot and Monet had acknowledged his talent very early on. If on the one hand his discreet work kept him for a long time in the category of “minor masters”, his contribution to the birth of Impressionism has now been clearly established.
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