Eugène Louis Boudin

born Honfleur, France, 1824; died Paris, France, 1898

BiographyLeisure and holiday scenes were favorites of the French impressionists, and Eugène Louis Boudin specialized in these images. Many of his works were painted in the popular coastal resort of Trouville, northwest of Paris. Boudin found the contrasts between water, land, and sky, as well as figures at rest and in motion, endlessly fascinating and painted numerous and varied series of beach scenes.

Boudin was born in Deauville, Honfleur, Normandy. His father was a sailor, and as a young man, he worked as a cabin boy on a steamer on the Seine River. He became especially interested in art when in 1835, his father became a frame-maker. Boudin became an assistant in his father's shop, and in that capacity met numerous artists working in the area including Jean-François Millet, Thomas Couture and Constant Tryon.

At the age of 26, he received a scholarship that allowed him to move to Paris. He became a frequent Salon exhibitor, winning a third-place medal in 1881 and a Gold Medal in 1889 at the Exposition Universelle. Three years later he was made a knight of the Légion of Honor.

(Sources: Exhibition labels, Benezit Dictionary of Artists)

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