.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In 1892, at the age of sixty-seven, Boudin traveled to Venice for the first time. Flush with his success that year--he had been awarded the prestigious Légion d'Honneur, and the French State had purchased one of his paintings at the Salon--he journeyed to the lagoon city in search of fresh inspiration. Nineteenth-century Venice drew countless artists and writers, who were attracted both to its glittering public face and to the romantic melancholy of a city-state from which power had long since ebbed. For his part, Boudin found himself mesmerized, as Monet would later be, by the rich atmospheric effects produced by the famous Venetian haze, which reminded him of the gray tonalities of Honfleur and Trouville. "I am somewhat disgusted by the usual painters of the area who have to some extent disfigured it by making it appear as a region warmed by the hottest sun," Boudin wrote to Durand-Ruel. "Venice, like all luminous regions, is grey in color, the atmosphere is soft and misty, and the sky is decked with clouds just like over Normandy or Holland" (quoted in J. Selz, Eugène Boudin, Naefels, 1982, p. 85).
Taking up the challenge of translating these subtle and evanescent effects onto canvas, Boudin returned to Venice in the summers of 1894 and 1895. On his first two visits, however, he completed only a very few paintings, perhaps struggling (as he often had in Normandy) to capture the ever-changing landscape: "I feel this vastness, this delicacy, the brilliant light which transforms everything to my eyes into magical brushes, and I can't make my muddle of colors convey this" (quoted in V. Hamilton, Boudin at Trouville, Glasgow, 1992, p. 9). During his final campaign in Venice, by contrast, Boudin succeeded in producing a remarkable corpus of some seventy-five canvases, which he himself would describe the next year his "swan song" (quoted in Eugène Boudin: 1824-1898, exh. cat., Musée Eugène Boudin, Honfleur, 1992, p. 169).
Although Boudin did venture from time to time into the smaller canals and less familiar reaches of Venice, the majority of his paintings are panoramic views that incorporate the best-known landmarks of the city. In the present painting, he depicts the area near the entrance to the Grand Canal, with the huge, domed church of Santa Maria de la Salute in the center of the composition and the Dogana (customs house) immediately to its right. This viewpoint was one that Canaletto, whose paintings Boudin had copied in the Louvre during the late 1860s, had often treated. But whereas Canaletto's crisp handling describes every detail of the iconic architecture and provides a powerful sense of recession, Boudin is principally concerned with the impression on the eye of light hitting stone and brick and fragmenting into filaments of color on the rippling surface of the canal. Peter Sutton has written, "These sparkling images of the ancient city and its monuments usually adopt a distant point of view in the tradition of Canaletto and Guardi, but are executed with a more animated touch that enlivens the sea and sky" (Boudin: Impressionist Marine Paintings, exh. cat., Peabody Museum of Salem, 1991, p. 78).
Boudin was exceptionally pleased with his views of Venice, exhibiting nine of them at the Salon in 1897, the year before his death. The series also found favor among contemporary collectors, with Venetian scenes fetching stronger prices than any other works at Boudin's posthumous studio sale in 1899. The present canvas, inscribed "à Juliette," was a gift from the artist to Juliette Cabaud, a governess with whom Boudin fell in love after the death of his wife and who shared the last six years of his life. The artist also gave Juliette two other paintings from his 1895 Venetian campaign, identical in size to the present canvas (Schmit, nos. 3448 and 3451; Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow, and sale, Christie's, London, 4 February 2002, lot 2).
Taking up the challenge of translating these subtle and evanescent effects onto canvas, Boudin returned to Venice in the summers of 1894 and 1895. On his first two visits, however, he completed only a very few paintings, perhaps struggling (as he often had in Normandy) to capture the ever-changing landscape: "I feel this vastness, this delicacy, the brilliant light which transforms everything to my eyes into magical brushes, and I can't make my muddle of colors convey this" (quoted in V. Hamilton, Boudin at Trouville, Glasgow, 1992, p. 9). During his final campaign in Venice, by contrast, Boudin succeeded in producing a remarkable corpus of some seventy-five canvases, which he himself would describe the next year his "swan song" (quoted in Eugène Boudin: 1824-1898, exh. cat., Musée Eugène Boudin, Honfleur, 1992, p. 169).
Although Boudin did venture from time to time into the smaller canals and less familiar reaches of Venice, the majority of his paintings are panoramic views that incorporate the best-known landmarks of the city. In the present painting, he depicts the area near the entrance to the Grand Canal, with the huge, domed church of Santa Maria de la Salute in the center of the composition and the Dogana (customs house) immediately to its right. This viewpoint was one that Canaletto, whose paintings Boudin had copied in the Louvre during the late 1860s, had often treated. But whereas Canaletto's crisp handling describes every detail of the iconic architecture and provides a powerful sense of recession, Boudin is principally concerned with the impression on the eye of light hitting stone and brick and fragmenting into filaments of color on the rippling surface of the canal. Peter Sutton has written, "These sparkling images of the ancient city and its monuments usually adopt a distant point of view in the tradition of Canaletto and Guardi, but are executed with a more animated touch that enlivens the sea and sky" (Boudin: Impressionist Marine Paintings, exh. cat., Peabody Museum of Salem, 1991, p. 78).
Boudin was exceptionally pleased with his views of Venice, exhibiting nine of them at the Salon in 1897, the year before his death. The series also found favor among contemporary collectors, with Venetian scenes fetching stronger prices than any other works at Boudin's posthumous studio sale in 1899. The present canvas, inscribed "à Juliette," was a gift from the artist to Juliette Cabaud, a governess with whom Boudin fell in love after the death of his wife and who shared the last six years of his life. The artist also gave Juliette two other paintings from his 1895 Venetian campaign, identical in size to the present canvas (Schmit, nos. 3448 and 3451; Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow, and sale, Christie's, London, 4 February 2002, lot 2).