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Lot Essay
Eugène Boudin was born in Honfleur, Normandy, as son of a ship's captain of one of the first steamships travelling between Le Havre and Honfleur, where the young Eugène worked as a cabin boy. Already from a young age he was exposed to the ever-changing sea and sky that would become the primary focus in his paintings. In his early days he remained at Le Havre where he opened a framing shop. Here he was visited by landscape painters whose work he also sold. One of them, Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875), encouraged him to take up painting. Sponsored by his former artist-clients, Boudin visited Paris, to study the works in Musée du Louvre. While in Paris, he also established contact with painters of the Barbizon School. Boudin quickly adopted a pattern he would continue to follow throughout his career, alternating his time between the seaside and Paris: in summer he found inspiration at the shores of Brittany and Normandy, where especially river estuaries and harbours most attracted Boudin's attention, making meticulously rendered pencil drawings and quickly brushed watercolours. Over winter, he would complete his outdoor sketches by developing them into paintings in his Parisian studio. He exhibited his paintings at the Parisian Salons of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which helped him gain official recognition.
Boudin was largely self-taught and had a strong preference for working directly from nature, informed by a sharp eye for the changing character of the sea, sky, light, and atmospheric effects altogether, which he animated by his deployment of lively yet short brushstrokes. Although en-plein-air painting was already an established tradition by the early nineteenth century, Eugène Boudin played a key role in promoting this in France. The sheer quantity of his oeuvre that focused on this theme is testimony to his commitment to the principals of en- plein-air painting. Inspired by Camille Corot (1797-1875), 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 (1840-1926), 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 the present lot the 'Bassin' of the old port of Le Havre is depicted with a Russian commander tall ship on the trubutary river of the river Seine. In this area of the port mainly steamships and commercial ships were received. In the distance, the docks and quays of Le Havre can be detected. The floating reflections in the rippling of the water are suggested through the application the brushwork in which the harmonious alternation of the green, blue, and grey tones beautifully act as a counterpoint to the calmness yet the immensity of the sky. Boudin's ingenuity lay in conveying the subtlety of midday sunshine, radiant sunsets, and impending storm clouds led Corot to laud Boudin as 'king of the skies.' The present lot is an extraordinary and striking example of his mastery of sea, sky and light.
Boudin was largely self-taught and had a strong preference for working directly from nature, informed by a sharp eye for the changing character of the sea, sky, light, and atmospheric effects altogether, which he animated by his deployment of lively yet short brushstrokes. Although en-plein-air painting was already an established tradition by the early nineteenth century, Eugène Boudin played a key role in promoting this in France. The sheer quantity of his oeuvre that focused on this theme is testimony to his commitment to the principals of en- plein-air painting. Inspired by Camille Corot (1797-1875), 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 (1840-1926), 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 the present lot the 'Bassin' of the old port of Le Havre is depicted with a Russian commander tall ship on the trubutary river of the river Seine. In this area of the port mainly steamships and commercial ships were received. In the distance, the docks and quays of Le Havre can be detected. The floating reflections in the rippling of the water are suggested through the application the brushwork in which the harmonious alternation of the green, blue, and grey tones beautifully act as a counterpoint to the calmness yet the immensity of the sky. Boudin's ingenuity lay in conveying the subtlety of midday sunshine, radiant sunsets, and impending storm clouds led Corot to laud Boudin as 'king of the skies.' The present lot is an extraordinary and striking example of his mastery of sea, sky and light.