Eugène Boudin

Eugène Louis Boudin was marine painter and one of the first French landscape artists to paint outdoors, expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. Although his art received very little admiration from the wide-ranging public, it was greatly respected by Corot, Courbet, Sisley, Manet, Monet and by the poet Baudelaire. Boudin's work is bight and clean in color. His favourites themes were the attractively dressed ladies and gentlemen of the bourgeoisie class upon Normandy beaches, but he also painted still lives, landscapes, and yet a few portraits. In his preoccupation with the effects of atmospheric light, his work is seen as strongly influenced Monet and the other Impressionists. However Boudin was a unpretentious man and considered himself neither a revolutionary nor as important an artist as the younger men. With luminous skies moving gently across the canvas, his work offers a soft and peaceful impression of an peaceful nature.