Eugène Boudin, Le Port du Le Havre, 1875 Oil on panel, 9.5 x 13 in. (24.1 x 33 cm.)

New York Private Collection

This painting, Le Port du Le Havre (Fig. 1), of an anchored trading brig with its sails furled, is an excellent example of Eugène Boudin’s work after the late 1860’s when the artist began to more explicitly turn his focus to the painting of coastal and harbor scenes. Here, broad horizontal brushstrokes show the stillness of the harbor waters, while serving both as mirror and as contrast to the undulating and tactile clouds passing overhead. The masts of the ship punctuate these mostly horizontal rhythms. They stretch simultaneously upwards above the horizon line and into the clouds, and, through the reflections in the water, downwards, bringing sea and sky together. Boudin, raised in the towns along the coast of Normandy, spent much of his life in the city of Le Havre, and a significant portion of the artist’s work depicts the port of Le Havre, and those of its neighboring towns and cities, Deauville and Honfleur (Figs. 2–6).1 Boudin is, however, more than just a painter of maritime scenes. As a student of Millet, and a mentor to Monet, Boudin’s work was a link between the éminences grises of the Barbizon School—Corot and Courbet were among Boudin’s closest friends—and Impressionist vanguards like Cezanne, Sisley, Pissarro and others.2 Monet is to have said, “If I have become a painter, it is to Eugene Boudin that I owe it.”3 In Boudin’s treatment of the skies and water in Le Port du Le Havre and his other paintings of the 1870’s and 1880’s we see something more than a detached technical interest in depicting the coastal scenes of Normandy and Brittany. The moist, gray skies and stormy seas are something akin to a birthright for Boudin, as if he had only cold, salty mist in his veins. Boudin often went to Paris to show his work and meet with peers, but he didn’t like it there. As he wrote in an 1869 letter to his friend Martin: “I dare not think of the beaches bathed in sunlight, of the beautiful stormy skies which would be so good to paint, while breathing the sea breeze.”4 This work comes from the collection of Charles Durand-Ruel, whose red wax seal is affixed to the verso of the panel. Durand-Ruel was the grandson of the founder of Galerie Durand-Ruel, Boudin’s gallerist in Paris and Boston. Research: M.S.

1 Ruth L. Benjamin, “Eugène Boudin, King of Skies,” The American Magazine of Art, vol. 23, no. 3 (September 1931): 193. 2 Richard R. Brettell, French Impressionists (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1987), 73. 3 Benjamin, 193. 4 Ibid., 195.

Fig. 1

Eugène Boudin, Le Port du Le Havre Oil on panel, 1875

9.5 x 13 in. (24.1 x 33 cm.) New York Private Collection

Fig. 2

Eugène Boudin, Deauville Harbour Oil on oak, 1888-90

11.3 x 16.3 (28.8 x 41.3 cm.) The National Gallery, London

Fig. 3

Eugène Boudin, Deauville, Le bassin Oil on panel, c. 1880–85

9. 9 x 14.1 in. (25.1 x 35.8 cm.) Private Collection, Florida

Fig. 4

Eugène Boudin, View of Bordeaux, from the Quai des Chartrons

Oil on fabric, 1874 21.6 x 35.3 in. (54.7 x 89.5 cm.)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Fig. 5

Eugène Boudin, Le Port de Camaret Oil on canvas, 1872

24.2 x 38.4 in. (61.5 x 97.5 cm.) Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN

Fig. 6

Eugène Boudin, Le Havre, Le Port Oil on panel, 1884

12.8 x 16.2 in. (32.4 x 41.1 cm.) Brooklyn Museum