Eugène Boudin

born Honfleur 1824, died Deauville 1898

The son of a ship's captain, Boudin opened a framing and stationery shop with a partner in Le Havre in 1844.  As was the custom before commercial art galleries were established, he exhibited in his window paintings by local artists. Constant Troyon and Jean-François Millet were two of these, and they convinced him to try painting himself.

The local art society gave him a scholarship to study art in Paris. At its end, in 1854, he returned to the Normandy coast and painted directly from nature. He met the young painter Claude Monet in 1858 and convinced him, as he himself had been persuaded, to paint out-of-doors. In 1859 he became friends with Gustave Courbet and in 1862 with Johan-Barthold Jongkind, whose fresh vision of marine painting made a significant impact on him.

Boudin's works were accepted regularly at the Salon beginning in 1859, and he showed several works in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.  His reputation was secure after 1871, and he began to travel, visiting Belgium, the Netherlands, the South of France, and Venice.

Despite his popular success and financial security (after 1883 the Parisian dealer Paul Durand-Ruel held exclusive rights to his output), Boudin received official honors only late in life – a third-class medal at the Salon of 1881, a gold medal at the 1889 Universal Exposition, and a knighthood in the Legion of Honour in 1892.

Source: Monet and the Impressionists exhibition catalogue:
Shackelford, George T M. Monet and the Impressionists.
Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2008

Works by Eugène Boudin in the exhibition

Fashionable figures on the beach  1865, Eugène Boudin.
Oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: gift of Mr and Mrs John A Wilson

The beach  1864, Eugène Boudin.
Oil on panel, Art Gallery of New South Wales: purchased 1926