Studio: international art (55.1912)

Eugene

from not knowing till quite late in life the meaning
of success.

The son of a pilot at Honfleur, Boudin was bom
at Havre. He spent much of his youth on the
water, and learnt to love and to know the sea and
the sailor’s life. Later he entered the establishment
of a stationer in Rouen, and got to know certain
clients of the house who were artists, and who took
it upon themselves to foster the young man’s
natural gifts as a water-colour painter.

In 1853 Boudin decided to devote himself en-
rely to art, and returned to his native town, here to
paint the scenes which had delighted his childhood.
Among other works which Boudin bequeathed, the
museum at Honfleur contains several copies after
Ruysdael and Watteau, which are a proof of the
respect and the love which Boudin held for masters
of the most diverse talents. At this period Boudin
became acquainted with Courbet, and later Corot,
who christened him “King of Skies,” and who
accepted the gift of a certain number of Boudin’s

Boudin

pictures; and his contributions to the Salon of
1859 earned forthe painter the encouragement and
praise of Baudelaire.

Acting upon the recommendation of Isabey,
with whom he came in contact about this time,
Boudin went to spend a summer at Deauville, the
seaside resort which the Due de Moray had
made fashionable by his patronage, and which was
the rendezvous of the aristocracy under the Second
Empire. The artist depicted in some water-colours
of amazing intensity of life the varying aspects of
this elegant plage, with its shore thronged with
bathers ; but his talent was neither understood nor
appreciated, he departed taking with him all his
pictures, of which he had sold not a single one.

In 1871 we find Boudin at Brussels with Vollon.
With the same feverish activity—he was, in fact, an
extraordinarily prolific painter—the artist set him-
self to paint the Flanders coast and the towns and
ports of the Scheldt, from Antwerp to Ostend,
Mariakerque, Nieuwkerke, Blankenberghe, and all
the different places on the coast-
line. There remain in particular
some fine views of Antwerp repre-
sentative of this period. All the
same it seems as though the artist
was less at ease in painting these
Belgian scenes than when he took
for his subject those Normandy
seascapes which he understood and
knew so thoroughly, and of which
he had penetrated all the secrets
of colour and of light; hence it is
that the works of this series are
without rival. Boudin still con-
tinued his wanderings, and we find
him painting at Douarnenez, Brest,
Bordeaux, and the shores of the
Basque provinces, Marseilles, Ville-
franche, Antibes, Beaulieu, and
Venice, but in none of these scenes
do we find his brush wielded with
the same delicacy and charm as it
is when he paints Honfleur, Trou-
ville, Le Havre, or Fecamp. His
pictures of these places form the
chief achievements of his talent,
and are those which will live.

Boudin worked, in truth, with un-
precedented facility. The hardest
task with him] was the] discovering
of his subject, which in his case
was the outcome of countless
essays and spirited sketches, most

27

“la jetee de trouville A. maree Basse” by e. boudin