Historically, Boudin is important as a link between the Men of 1830 and
the Impressionists—more specifically, between Corot and Monet. If the
public and the conservatives of the Academy ignored him, his art was
understood and admired by his greatest confreres. “King of the skies,”
Corot called him. Courbet, after watching him paint a canvas, exclaimed,
“Truly you are one of the seraphim, for you alone understand the heavens!”
Monet, in a letter to him in 1889, wrote “in recognition of the advice
which has made me what I am.” The modest Boudin in turn gives much credit
to Corot, Courbet and Jongkind for his own insight into the subtle truths
of atmosphere.
Born at Honfleur, the son of a steamboat pilot, Boudin was a cabin-boy
until the age of fourteen. In spare moments, he began to make sketches
which revealed talent. Later he was able to devote more time to painting,
although even beyond the age of fifty there were periods when he was
obliged to turn day-laborer to keep himself alive. The greater part of
his paintings represent scenes in Norman and Breton harbors showing quais
and jetties with the bare masts of square-riggers fretted against gray
skies. Some time after 1868 Isabey persuaded him to paint the fashionable
watering places, and it was several years later that our Beach at
Trouville must have been produced. Yet in reality his subject was always
sky and atmosphere. The charm of his water, the depth and reach of his
skies, with that marvelous subtlety of silvery grays, and violet grays,
and leaden grays, his habit of painting always “en plein-air,” his way of
using the brush, these things must indeed have influenced the younger
Monet, and Monet’s canvases dated around 1870 show a clear parallelism.
[Geranium. Albert Andre, 1869-]