Rouen, Vue prise du cours La Seine, soir

Boudin used the towns of Normandy and Brittany as backdrops for his study of the ever-changing role of nature in his painting. The sheer quantity of his oeuvre that focused on this theme is testimony to his commitment to the principals of plein air painting. Inspired by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Boudin had begun working in this manner as early as the 1850s. He participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and his pronouncement to the aspiring painter Claude Monet, to paint out of doors and to record "nature truly seen in all its variety and freshness," summarizes the aim of his work. In an interview that Monet gave to Boudin's biographer Georges Jean-Aubry in the early 1920s, Monet declared, "If I have become a painter, I owe it all to Boudin" (quoted in P.H. Tucker, The Impressionists at Argenteuil, New Haven and London, 2000, p. 42).

In September of 1895 Boudin visited Rouen; the present work dates from this trip and shows the town viewed from the opposite bank of the river Seine.