Artists

Eugène Boudin is known as "the painter of beaches" and spent much of his lifetime at the beach resort in Trouville, on the coast of Normandy, painting scenes of Parisians on holiday. Boudin had a talent for observation, able to keenly observe and scrutinize those around him. Complimenting his ability to observe, Boudin possessed an insatiable passion for nature and a love of capturing the movements of people at play. Boudin was able to create paintings that came alive with his use of color; oceans seemed to roll, and the sand would flicker in the sun. His brushstrokes are loose and playful, and his paintings are laced with constellations of unmixed color taken straight from his palette, leading the eye around the canvas. Boudin's work did not focus on the traditional subjects of the landscape painters before him such as Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorraine. Gone are the academic and religious subjects. Instead the gestures of the people collecting shells at the beach, the flickering light in the sky, and the sun on the sand are what Boudin concerned himself with painting. This creative new approach to the function of painting influenced and inspired Impressionists, including Claude Monet, who returned to this beach to paint what Boudin had years before him.