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Lot Essay
Scène de plage was painted in 1869, an important year in the life of Eugène Boudin, an artist whose career was intrinsically entwined with many of the greatest figures of the Nineteenth Century in France. It was in 1869 that Boudin would find himself defending his sometime pupil Claude Monet, when they both exhibited in the Salon in Paris. That year, Boudin had also begun to enjoy the spoils of increasing fame: he was being commissioned more widely, had held an auction of his own work that had been a success, notable with many works on paper being acquired by his fellow artists, and had also entered an arrangement to send pictures to Belgium for sale through M. Gauchez.
During the Summer of 1869, Boudin was kept from his beloved sea by commissions, a reflection of his success yet one which frustrated him. 'I dare not think of the beaches bathed in sunshine, of the beautiful stormy skies which it would be so good to paint while breathing the sea air,' he complained (Boudin, quoted in J. Selz, Eugène Boudin, Naefels, 1982, p. 60). However, his painting campaign was only delayed, and when he reached the coast, staying in Brittany and Normandy, he immersed himself in depicting that world again. That enthusiasm is palpable in Scène de plage: the picture is filled with the bustle of life as the various characters mill on the beach under the grey canopy of the sky, itself ruptured by gleaming light which is reflected in some of the silvery areas of water while others remain resolutely leaden.
Boudin has perfectly demonstrated his ability to capture a scene in terms of both the people in the foreground and, crucially, the weather and light on the beach. By the time he painted Scène de plage, Boudin had begun to shift away from this form of composition, despite remaining primarily associated with it, focussing instead on seascapes and jetties. However, pictures such as Scène de plage and Baigneurs sur la plage de Trouville, Calvados of the same year, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, reveal his continued fascination with the theme. Indeed, he himself wrote that year that this was a subject matter that should not be sneered at, however worthy the peasants being painted by Jean-François Millet and others might be: 'between you and me, these bourgeois who walk on the jetty at sunset also have a right to be immortalised on canvas, to be brought out into the light, haven't they? After all, they are often resting after hard work, these people who have come out of their offices' (Boudin, 1869, quoted in R.L. Benjamin, Eugène Boudin, New York, 1937, p. 74).
During the Summer of 1869, Boudin was kept from his beloved sea by commissions, a reflection of his success yet one which frustrated him. 'I dare not think of the beaches bathed in sunshine, of the beautiful stormy skies which it would be so good to paint while breathing the sea air,' he complained (Boudin, quoted in J. Selz, Eugène Boudin, Naefels, 1982, p. 60). However, his painting campaign was only delayed, and when he reached the coast, staying in Brittany and Normandy, he immersed himself in depicting that world again. That enthusiasm is palpable in Scène de plage: the picture is filled with the bustle of life as the various characters mill on the beach under the grey canopy of the sky, itself ruptured by gleaming light which is reflected in some of the silvery areas of water while others remain resolutely leaden.
Boudin has perfectly demonstrated his ability to capture a scene in terms of both the people in the foreground and, crucially, the weather and light on the beach. By the time he painted Scène de plage, Boudin had begun to shift away from this form of composition, despite remaining primarily associated with it, focussing instead on seascapes and jetties. However, pictures such as Scène de plage and Baigneurs sur la plage de Trouville, Calvados of the same year, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, reveal his continued fascination with the theme. Indeed, he himself wrote that year that this was a subject matter that should not be sneered at, however worthy the peasants being painted by Jean-François Millet and others might be: 'between you and me, these bourgeois who walk on the jetty at sunset also have a right to be immortalised on canvas, to be brought out into the light, haven't they? After all, they are often resting after hard work, these people who have come out of their offices' (Boudin, 1869, quoted in R.L. Benjamin, Eugène Boudin, New York, 1937, p. 74).