Eugène Boudin French, 1824-1898

Eugène Boudin was a French painter best known for his sensitive and lively depictions of beach scenes and windswept harbors. He is considered one of the earliest plein-air painters, completed his canvases entirely in situ rather than from studies back in the studio. Boudin met and befriended the young Claude Monet, taking him on painting excursions and teaching him about color, and the two remained lifelong friends. Born on July 12, 1824 in Honfleur, France, his father was a harbor pilot and also a picture framer. It was at his father’s framing shop that young Boudin developed his interest in painting and met the artists Thomas Couture, Jean François Millet and Constant Troyon, who exhibited at his father’s shop. The poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire first drew the public’s attention to Boudin’s work after the Paris Salon of 1859. He died on August 8, 1898 in Deauville, France. Today, the artist's works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.