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Italian Version
 Eugène Louis Boudin
(1824-1898)
Eugène Boudin (July 12, 1824 – August 8, 1898) was one of the first
French landscape painters to paint outdoors.
Boudin was marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes
upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summary and economic,
garnered the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire, and Corot who, gazing at his
pictures, said to him, "You are the master of the sky."
Biography
Born at Honfleur, Normandy, the son of a sailor, he worked as cabin boy
onboard the rickety steamer that sailed between Havre and Honfleur
across the estuary of the Seine. But before old age came on him,
Boudin's father abandoned seafaring, and his son gave it up too, having
no real vocation for it, though he preserved to his last days much of a
sailor's character, frankness, accessibility, and open-heartedness.
Trouville. 1864. Eugène Boudin.In 1835 his family moved to Le Havre,
where his father established himself as stationer and frame-maker. He
began work the next year as an assistant in a stationery and framing
store before opening his own small shop. There he came into contact with
artists working in the area and exhibited in his shop the paintings of
Constant Troyon and Jean-François Millet, who, along with Jean-Baptiste
Isabey and Thomas Couture whom he met during this time, encouraged young
Boudin to follow an artistic career. At the age of 22 he abandoned the
world of commerce, started painting full-time, and traveled to Paris the
following year and then through Flanders. In 1850 he earned a
scholarship that enabled him to move to Paris, although he often
returned to paint in Normandy and, from 1855, made regular trips to
Brittany.
Dutch 17th century masters profoundly influenced him, and on meeting the
Dutch painter Johan Jongkind, who already made his mark in French
artistic circles, Boudin was advised by his new friend to paint outdoors
(en plein air). He also worked with Troyon and Isabey, and in 1859 met
Gustave Courbet who introduced him to Charles Baudelaire, the first
critic to draw Boudin’s talents to public attention when the artist made
his debut at the 1859 Paris Salon.
In 1857 Boudin met the young Claude Monet who spent several months
working with Boudin in his studio. The two remained lifelong friends and
Monet later paid tribute to Boudin’s early influence. Boudin joined
Monet and his young friends in the first Impressionist exhibition in
1874, but never considered himself a radical or innovator.
Boudin’s growing reputation enabled him to travel extensively in the
1870s. He visited Belgium, the Netherlands, and southern France, and
from 1892 to 1895 made regular trips to Venice. He continued to exhibit
at the Paris Salons, receiving a third place medal at the Paris Salon of
1881, and a gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. In 1892
Boudin was made a knight of the Légion d'honneur, a somewhat tardy
recognition of his talents and influence on the art of his
contemporaries.
Late in his life he returned to the south of France as a refuge from
ill-health, and recognizing soon that the relief it could give him was
almost spent, he returned to his home at Deauville, to die within sight
of Channel waters and under Channel skies
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