Boudin, Eugene Biography

Boudin was born in Honfleur, the son of a ship's captain. The centre of his early working life was Le Havre where he opened a framing shop, visited by painters, including Jean-Francois Millet, who encouraged him to take up painting. Boudin visited Paris, where he studied at the Louvre. Like Corot, Boudin was largely self-taught and he followed Corot's example in his preference for working directly from nature. The majority of his paintings are small landscapes of the harbours and beaches of the coast of northern France, informed by a sharp eye for social detail. His many beach scenes directly link the carefully observed naturalism of the early 19th century and the brilliant light and fluid brushwork of late 19th-century Impressionism. In about 1856 Boudin met Claude-Oscar Monet and introduced him to outdoor painting. The two worked together in the later 1860s.

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