Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) was a French artist whose paintings and the way they were painted, according to many art historians, became a source of inspiration for many Impressionists. Boudin can be called the "French Aivazovsky" - he sincerely loved to depict the sea, ships, beaches, expensive resorts and leisurely strolling vacationers.
The beach at Trouville
Boudin painted people as God would have it - for him it was purely craft work, but nature, sea and ships depicted carefully and inspirational, in his opinion, you can not treat without proper admiration for such a majestic spectacle as a sailing ship sailing on the sea with all the sails and the task of the artist to show this beauty. His paintings were characterized by a silvery-pearlescent scale, sharp jerky strokes, Boudin tried to convey as authentically as possible shimmering sea surface under the sun, which he always succeeded wonderfully.
Entrance to the harbor. Le Havre
And such a love for the sea at Boudin did not appear by chance - his father was a sailor, and at the age of 10 and the young Eugene Boudin himself took a job as a cabin boy on the ship where his father worked. But after a year, his father sailed the seas bored, he decided to find a quieter occupation - opened a small store in the French city of Le Havre, selling supplies for artists and stationery, and expected to live there until a quiet and secure old age.
View from the harbor. Le Havre
Eugène helped his father and after 9 years had his own small workshop where he made frames for paintings. On display were samples of frames framing paintings by the artists Mille, Tom Couture and others. They gave advice on their manufacture, and noticing Boudin's undeniable talent for painting, recommended that he seriously pursue it. So he soon became his own in the artistic crowd.
At the age of 22 Boudin decided to give up trade and devote himself entirely to painting. Success was not long in coming, 4 years later he organized an exhibition of his paintings in Le Havre and received a good scholarship from local municipal officials - they had to somehow support local talent. Boudin went to Paris, where he copied paintings in the Louvre, especially admiring the works of the Dutch XVII century. There was everything like in life, as he saw himself when he was a child sailing with his father on a boat - heavy clouds, low horizon, pearlescent gray sea.
Etretat. The Rock of Aval
And soon, on the advice of his teacher Eugène Isabe, he painted a series of paintings on a cheerful and light subject, which could easily be sold - strolling vacationers on the sea beach.
On the image of the sea and nature Boudin laid out to the full, but the vacationers treated with disdain: "ashamed to write these idlers and parasites, how can you waste your time so ineffectually, if so many people are exhausted for a piece of bread".
The scene on the beach at Trouville
But it turned out that Boudin grabbed a "gold mine". It was this subject became the most popular, critics praised the paintings, and the buyers of them sold them like hotcakes, not embarrassed by the high price. And most importantly - Boudin did not step on the throat of his own truth and ideas about the beautiful, he was not interested in the vacationing bourgeois, and what the sea in the background, as reflected on the water of the sun's glare, and the sky floating clouds. Light, water and air were his elements, and everything else was just a background, even if his customers thought otherwise.
Mole in Deauville
Boudin favored plein air work: "two strokes of the brush in nature are more important than two days spent in a stuffy studio". It is he strongly advised 17-year-old caricaturist Monet, to work with landscapes, and a few years later Monet will write his famous painting "Inspiration, Sunrise", which gave the name of the whole artistic direction, which determined the development of painting. So Boudin's paintings are much more than gawkers strolling along the beach.
Buy handmade goods or modern art you can on artAlebrio - is an international marketplace for people who want to create, sell, buy and collect unique items and art - buy the best with us artAlebrio.com.
By confirming your order you unconditionally accept these General Conditions of Sale
