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Lot Essay
Painted in 1863-1864 Honfleur, la jetée was executed when Boudin was at the peak of his powers and was painting a series of magnificent scenes of coastal resorts. His related crinoline subjects from the 1860s can be found in some of the world's great museums, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C (S.616), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (S.271) and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (S.258).
Honfleur was the artist's native town and the present picture depicts fashionable society enjoying the town's pier (fig. 1). Boudin remained very attached to the town of his birth, despite his move to Paris and painted approximately one hundred and twenty paintings in and around Honfleur, three quarters of which were painted between 1856 and 1869. However, views of fashionable society on the pier at Honfleur itself are extremely rare. There is an early charcoal and pastel drawing of the lighthouse in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and other more distant pastel views of the pier but in his catalogue raisonné Schmit records only one other oil of the pier itself, which is later in date and much less resolved (S.3994; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
The acquisition of this jetty subject, so rare in the artist's oeuvre, testifies to M. Friedmann's eye for quality and echoes that of a previous owner of Honfleur, la jetèe, Jules Strauss. M. Friedmann, probably purchased the painting from Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, not long after the Strauss sale in 1902, and it has remained in the same family until the present day.
Honfleur was the artist's native town and the present picture depicts fashionable society enjoying the town's pier (fig. 1). Boudin remained very attached to the town of his birth, despite his move to Paris and painted approximately one hundred and twenty paintings in and around Honfleur, three quarters of which were painted between 1856 and 1869. However, views of fashionable society on the pier at Honfleur itself are extremely rare. There is an early charcoal and pastel drawing of the lighthouse in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and other more distant pastel views of the pier but in his catalogue raisonné Schmit records only one other oil of the pier itself, which is later in date and much less resolved (S.3994; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
The acquisition of this jetty subject, so rare in the artist's oeuvre, testifies to M. Friedmann's eye for quality and echoes that of a previous owner of Honfleur, la jetèe, Jules Strauss. M. Friedmann, probably purchased the painting from Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, not long after the Strauss sale in 1902, and it has remained in the same family until the present day.