The early years of Harriet Backer’s career saw her progress from early Salon-ready realism to the more painterly and colourful style of her personal interpretation of Impressionism. Her landscapes captured the intensity of the Norwegian summer, and she had been exploring the play of light indoors in interiors. By 1890, her career was established, her art recognised and increasingly appreciated, and she had started teaching. She now turned her attention from the play of natural light to that of lamplight.

Syende kvinne ved lampelys (By Lamplight) (1890) reverses the lighting of her previous interiors. Now the view through the window is the blackness of night, and the interior is lit by a kerosene lamp on the table inside. The play of light is changed into the play of shadow, with the woman’s shadow magnified on the wall behind her.

Her Aften, interiør (Evening, Interior) (Reading) (1890) takes this further, and shows the influence of Japonisme, particularly in the scarlet lampshade at the right. Backer shows how the harsh directional light casts strange shadows with the effect of altering our reading of facial features, the folds in clothing, and magnifying the shadow on the wall. Although the light doesn’t create the woman and the objects around her, by determining how we see her, it transforms our perceptions and interpretation.

Kone som syr (Woman Sewing) (1890) takes us back to more familiar daytime lighting, as a woman (a wife in the Norwegian title) sits at her sewing. This appears to have been a quick oil sketch, with its gestural depictions of potted plants, table, and chair, going beyond Impressionism.

In her Pike ved vinduet (Girl by the window) (1891), the girl looks out from the sunlit interior to a world we cannot discern, beyond the miniature internal world of chair, stove, and potted plants.

Inngangskoner (Churching) (1892) shows a traditional ceremony in which a woman who has just completed the confinement following the birth of her child is received back at church, where she gives thanks for the survival of her baby and herself, and prays for their continuing health. This is believed to show the sacristy to the left of the altar in Tanum Kirke, in Bærum, Norway. Backer marks this important moment in a mother’s life with the light of hope, as emergence from the suffuse light of the nursery.

The next event in the life of mother and baby is shown in her Barnedåp i Tanum Kirke (Christening in Tanum Church) (1892), one of Backer’s most sophisticated paintings. Again she places the viewer inside, looking now both outward and inward.

The left of the canvas takes the eye deep through the church door to the outside world, where a mother is bringing her child in for infant baptism. The rich green light of that outside world colours the heavy church door, and its inner wood panelling, and the floorboards and perspective projection bring the baptismal party in.

At the right, two women are sat in an enclosed stall waiting for the arrival of the baptismal party. One has turned and partly opened the door to their stall in her effort to look out and see the party enter church. Backer controls the level of detail and looseness to brilliant effect, ensuring we always see just what she wants us to, enough to bring the image to life, but never so much that our attention becomes lost in the irrelevant.

This painting of the ages of woman is believed to have been influenced by Wilhelm Leibl’s (1844-1900) Three Women in Church (1882), which Backer had seen when studying in Munich. She considered this to be her greatest painting, and it was favourably received when exhibited at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893.

Gamlestua på Kolbotn (Old Living Room at Kolbotn) (1896) is an intimate view of the living room of a farm in Østerdalen, Norway. Friends of the artist Hulda and Arne Garborg are seen sat at the table, Arne holding his fiddle. Behind them are paintings, among them two landscapes painted by Backer’s friend Kitty Kielland. Kielland, Backer and the Garborgs had first met in Paris in 1885.

Backer hadn’t abandoned landscapes, but they too had moved on from regular Impressionism. Einundfjell (1897) shows her skills in capturing the more subtle light and colour of twilight. The bright surface of the distant lake separates the dark hills behind from the more colourful meadows of the foreground.

Thorvald Boecks bibliotek (Thorvald Boeck’s Library) (1902) is one of Backer’s few interiors devoid of people, here replaced by books from floor to ceiling. The intricate detail of their many spines, furniture, and other decorations contrasts markedly with the bare floorboards in the foreground.

In 1907, Backer had her first solo exhibition in Oslo. During that first decade of the twentieth century, her interiors switched away from the intimacy of the rural home, to those of Norway’s country churches.

Of the many wonderful later paintings that she made of church interiors, the finest must be Uvdal Stave Church (1909).

Stave churches were once numerous throughout Europe, but are now only common in rural Norway. Their construction is based on high internal posts (staves) which give them a characteristic tall, peaked appearance. Uvdal is a particularly good example, dating from around 1168. As with many old churches, its interior has been extensively painted and decorated, and this has been allowed to remain, unlike many painted churches in Britain which suffered removal of all such decoration.

Backer’s richly-coloured view of the interior of the church is lit from windows behind its pulpit, throwing the brightest light on the altar. The walls and ceiling are covered with images and decorations, which she sketches in, again manipulating the level of detail to control their distraction. Slightly to the left of centre the main stave is decorated with rich blues, divides the canvas, but affords us the view up to the brightly lit altar. To the left of the stave a woman, dressed in her Sunday finest, sits reading outside the stalls.

This is an expression of Backer’s own deep religious beliefs, her career-long exploration of lit interiors, and her profound love of her native country and its people.

In 1912, the year that she retired from teaching, she was awarded the gold King’s Medal of Merit, and in 1921 was made the State Laureate in Painting (Statens kunstnerlønn), an appointment previously held by Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg. She was the first woman to be so appointed. She is known to have completed about 180 paintings in all before she died in Oslo on 25 March 1932, and the grand old age of 87.

References

Wikipedia (English), Wikipedia (Norwegian).
Many of her best paintings are in Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, where they’re viewable online.

Harriet Backer (1845–1932) is one of Norway’s most famous artists, a pioneering woman painter, and an influential teacher. Despite an internationally successful career, she’s now hardly known outside her native country. This is the first of two articles in which I show a small selection of her finest paintings.

Born into a wealthy family living at Holmestrand on the west bank of Oslofjord, south of Oslo, she showed an early aptitude for drawing. When the family moved to Oslo in 1857 she was originally sent to a school for governesses. She started drawing and painting lessons in Oslo in 1867, and was able to travel in the company of her sister, the concert pianist and composer Agathe Backer-Grøndahl. Her talent was recognised, and in 1874 she went to Munich where she became a pupil of her compatriot Eilif Peterssen.

Avskjeden (The Farewell) (1878) was probably Backer’s first successful painting. It shows a grown daughter, left of centre, bidding farewell to her family as she leaves home. She probably painted this from her own emotional experience, as her father died in 1877, and she had informed her mother that she did not intend returning home, but would pursue her painting career instead.

It also marked the year that she went to Paris, where she was a pupil of Léon Bonnat and Jean-Léon Gérôme, and for a brief time of Jules Bastien-Lepage.

In France, her style started to loosen up: Solitude from about 1880 was another early success, and her first painting accepted for the Salon that year. This was one of her first interiors featuring limited light, whose play was to become a dominant theme in her paintings. Although she remained based in Paris, she returned to Norway each summer, where she seems to have painted mostly landscapes.

Asta Nørregard, another Norwegian painter studying in Paris at the time, modelled for her Blått interiør (Blue Interior) (1883). This develops the theme of the play of light from the window on the person and contents of the interior of the room, its composition complicated by the large mirror at the left. Her brushstrokes are now overtly painterly, and bright colours are starting to bring harmonies and contrasts.

To barn og tregruppe (Two children and a group of trees) (1885) is a good example of Backer’s summer landscapes, which were probably at least started en plein air, if finished in the studio, perhaps. She had learned to paint outdoors in Paris, where it had become generally popular, not just among the Impressionists.

På Bleikeplassen, Jæren (At the Bleaching Place, Jæren) (1886) is a pure plein air oil sketch, in which time didn’t permit the addition of details to the buildings or figures. It shows three women hard at work laying linen garments out to bleach in the sunshine.

På blekevollen (Bleaching Linen) (1886-7) is a more finished painting of similar activity. At this time her style was clearly Impressionist, but expressed in her distinctive manner.

Back in Paris, she continued to explore the play of light in interiors, with Chez Moi from 1887 as an example. She strikes a good balance between fine detail and the more painterly: the piano keys, dress, plant, and reflections on the pictures hanging on the wall, are each shown with precision.

In 1888 she finally returned to Norway and settled in Sandvika, on the outskirts of Oslo. There she continued to concentrate on interiors, including those illuminated by lamplight.

During the summer, she still went out into the rich countryside to paint en plein air and capture the glorious colours of the intense Norwegian summer. Her Landskap fra Ulvin (Landscape from Ulvin) (1889) is a good example; sadly, relatively few of her landscapes seem to have made their way into public collections, remaining in private ownership and inaccessible.

Growing recognition, including the award of a silver medal at the Exposition Internationale of 1889, brought requests for her to take on pupils, and in that year she started teaching in what soon developed into a thriving art school. The final years of the 1800s and the start of the new century marked the peak of her career, with a succession of major paintings in addition to that teaching, as I’ll show in next week’s second and concluding article.

References

Wikipedia (English), Wikipedia (Norwegian).
Many of her best paintings are in Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, where they’re viewable online.

The first of these two articles on the short life of Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) left him at the end of 1825, established as a successful painter of watercolour landscapes, many of which were turned into prints, and of acclaimed oil paintings.

Early in 1826, Eugène Delacroix invited Bonington to share his Paris studio. Although there doesn’t appear to be a detailed study of Bonington’s influence over Delacroix, perhaps the best summary is in Delacroix’s words:
“I never tired of watching his marvellous grasp of effects and the facility of his execution; not that he was readily satisfied. On the contrary, he frequently redid completely finished passages which had appeared wonderful to us; but his talent was such that he instantly recovered with his brush new effects as charming as the first.”
(Delacroix, Correspondence 4:287, letter of 30 November 1862, quoted in Noon p 41.)

Bonington continued to paint coastal views. Noon argues that his Les Salinières near Trouville (1826) was painted from memory in the autumn of 1826, recalling his tour with Huet the previous year, and after Bonington’s return from Italy to his own studio in Paris. The repoussoir trees at the left are wonderfully painterly.

The Abbey St-Amand, Rouen (c 1827-8) is a rare late watercolour showing this dilapidated monastery near Rouen Cathedral. Noon suggests that Bonington may have painted it when he passed through Rouen on his way to London in 1827, or later from his memory and sketches.

From 1825, Bonington had also started painting in earnest figurative works of history painting. Although it would turn out that he had little time to develop in this genre, he demonstrated that he was as technically competent with figures as he was with nature.

Noon reveals that Portia and Bassanio (c 1826) shows a scene from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (Act 3, scene 2), in which Bassanio has come to Portia’s palace at Belmont, to win her hand in marriage. To do this, he must choose the correct casket out of three containing gold, silver, and lead, of which the last contained the winning portrait of Portia. Here Portia’s maid Nerissa stands aside, and Bassanio, recognising his successful choice, seals the betrothal contract with a kiss.

The sentimental melancholy of The Use of Tears (1827) is tragically appropriate if not prescient. It shows a young woman in her sickbed, if not deathbed, a popular and commonly experienced scene at the time.

It was Noon who proposed that this painting, Knight and Page (Goetz von Berlichingen) (c 1826), showed Goetz von Berlichingen from Goethe’s Sturm and Drang tragedy of that name. He was a German warlord who struggled irrationally to defend his feudal lifestyle in the face of modern reform. Bonington probably painted this when he was sharing Delacroix’s studio in early 1826, and left it incomplete with Delacroix when he moved out.

In April 1826, Bonington left Paris with Charles Rivet and crossed the Alps via the Simplon Pass to Italy. After a few days rest in Milan, they pressed on to arrive in Venice later that month. Once there Bonington produced many sketches and studies, some watercolours painted in front of the motif, and a few oil sketches on millboard that were at least started en plein air.

On the Grand Canal (1826) is a brilliant plein air oil sketch painted from a boat, showing the entrance to the Grand Canal. Bonington has removed one of the palazzi, but otherwise appears faithful to the motif.

The Grand Canal Looking Toward the Rialto (1826), also on millboard, may have been started en plein air, but appears to have been completed later in the studio, when back in Paris, which may account for the difference in hues in the sky.

Bonington and Rivet left Venice on 18 May, visited Padua, Florence, and Pisa, and Bonington then returned alone via Switzerland in June. Once back in Paris, he moved to his own studio, while remaining on good terms with Delacroix, who considered that the visit to Italy had changed Bonington’s style.

In the late Spring and early summer of 1827, Bonington went to London to develop his links with the art trade there. The later months of the year were extremely busy for him, preparing for a much-delayed Salon and other exhibitions. He was again highly successful at the Salon, eventually held in two parts during November 1827 and from February 1828, when Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus was first shown. Sadly Bonington’s paintings from the second part of the Salon have either vanished or become badly damaged, with a single exception.

Riva degli Schiavoni, from near S. Biagio (c 1827) shows the San Marco basin from the Arsenal traghetto. Although a small watercolour, Noon considers it was painted well after Bonington’s return from Italy.

Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession (1827) was apparently painted in late 1827 for James Carpenter, from graphite studies Bonington had made during his visit in 1826. Painted on a white ground, it unfortunately underwent severe shrinkage, and was extensively retouched as a result. However, it was generally very well received at the time, despite the liberties taken with its representation of the view.

The Piazzetta, Venice (1827) shows the smaller Piazzetta passing out from the Piazza San Marco. This too was painted in the studio from graphite sketches made during his 1826 visit, and again takes liberties with reality.

In February 1828, Bonington visited London again in time to see the two views of Venice above exhibited at the British Institution, then returned to Paris to recuperate from the hectic work of the winter, resuming his printmaking projects. In May he sent three oil paintings for the Royal Academy exhibition, encompassing his coastal views, Venice, and history.

Grand Canal, the Rialto in the Distance – Sunrise (1828) is another of Bonington’s finest oil paintings, made in the studio from graphite and other sketches from 1826. This painting has quite commonly been described as showing sunset, but as the view faces almost due east, must have been set in the early morning.

Bonington’s health was deteriorating during the early summer, and by the beginning of July he was physically incapacitated. He continued to sketch and paint from the back of cabs in Paris, but in September his parents had him moved to London for medical attention. He died there as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis – ‘King Death’ – on 23 September 1828, a month before he would have turned 26.

Although painted on millboard suggesting that it may have at least started as a plein air sketch, his Corso Sant’Anastasia, Verona (1828) contains a lot of painterly detail that couldn’t have been completed in a single session. It’s also likely that the religious procession was a late addition, influenced by a Le Nain painting in the Louvre. Noon considers this was “almost certainly the last picture Bonington painted before his final illness in July 1828.”

In less than a decade of painting professionally, Bonington was amazingly prolific: Noon’s catalogue includes 400 watercolours and oil paintings, and there are undoubtedly many others still unknown or lost. He had a direct influence on Delacroix, and thereby indirectly on the Impressionists and the major changes of the latter half of the nineteenth century. His use of colour and light, his painterly brushwork, his development of coastal landscapes in Normandy, and of riverbank scenes in the Île de Paris, were important groundwork for the Impressionists. Bonington’s scenes of the traditional fishing industry operating on beaches may even have influenced Eugène Boudin in his paintings on the Channel coast of France, and perhaps the much later watercolours of Winslow Homer at Cullercoats in England.

References

Biography by Bruce MacEvoy
Wikipedia’s short article

Noon P (2008) Richard Parkes Bonington, The Complete Paintings, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 13421 6. Note that numbers given after the year of each painting in the captions refer to Noon’s catalogue.

In the first half of the nineteenth century Britain had three landscape painters of international repute: John Constable (1776–1837), whose work sold better in France than in England, JMW Turner (1775–1851), whose later works anticipated Impressionism, and Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828), who was establishing his international reputation when he died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of only twenty-five. In this and tomorrow’s article I celebrate the brief and brilliant art of the last of those, Richard Parkes Bonington.

Bonington was born near Nottingham, England. His father had inherited the post of Nottinghamshire jailer in 1789, but before his son was born, father had abandoned that to be a drawing instructor and portrait painter, and had become a reasonably successful provincial artist. The early years of the nineteenth century were financially difficult, and father and mother saw their income falling, so decided to move to France. His father set up a lace factory in Calais in 1817, then moved to Paris the following year to establish a lace shop.

Bonington (the son) was first taught painting by his father, but was rescued from that by Louis Francia, who had recently returned from England. He also copied in the Louvre, and in 1819 enrolled in the atelier of Baron Gros at the Institut de France, the most prestigious in France at the time. Among his fellow students were Paul Delaroche, Robert-Fleury, and Charlet. At first, Bonington and Gros didn’t get on well, but became reconciled over time.

Among Bonington’s favourite views for watercolours were those of the Hôtel des Invalides, Paris from the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, and this View of the Pont des Arts from the Quai du Louvre from about 1819-20 when he wasn’t quite eighteen.

With these watercolour views of Paris selling well, Bonington toured Normandy in the autumn of 1821, returning via Rouen. During that he started developing his interest in coastal landscapes, which were to remain central for the rest of his career. He began to exhibit in the Salon from 1822, and to produce illustrations for travel books published by his father and Ostervald, who also dealt in British paintings.

By 1823, Bonington’s watercolours had become popular, with many being turned into prints, and were generating a healthy income for him and his parents. That year he toured north from Rouen along the coast to Calais and Flanders, then back to Paris via Amiens. Typical of the views which he painted then is this watercolour Near Honfleur (c 1823), although this doesn’t appear to have been turned into a print.

In early 1824, Bonington, in company with his colleague Colin, sketched and painted in Dunkerque and along the north coast again; although Colin returned earlier, Bonington didn’t get back to Paris until the early summer. Among the watercolour views he painted around this time was Fishing Boats Aground (c 1823-4).

He was then working successfully in oils as well as watercolours, and in the summer of 1824 had two oils and a watercolour accepted for the Salon and sold in advance for 500 francs each. He was also awarded a gold medal at that Salon, alongside Constable and Copley Fielding, and Sir Thomas Lawrence was awarded the Legion of Honour. Bonington returned to Dunkerque and continued to paint.

It has been suggested that Bonington’s A Fishmarket near Boulogne (1824) was one of his paintings exhibited in the Salon in 1824, but Noon points out that this canvas was larger than any of his listed for that Salon. It is, without doubt, one of his most significant early paintings, and one of the best of his brief career.

This detail view shows how loosely he handled many of the figures and objects, and the exaggerated aerial perspective giving it such depth.

Another early and successful oil painting, his Near Quillebeuf (c 1824-5) may have a little of Constable’s influence in its foreground, but otherwise shows similar style to A Fishmarket near Boulogne.

Fishing Vessels in a Choppy Sea (1825) was probably a watercolour copy of his A Sea Piece (c 1824), which may have been inspired by Turner’s marines. It was probably painted at Cap Blanc Nez off Wissant.

In May 1825, Bonington and Colin visited London, where they met up with Eugène Delacroix. There they studied public and private collections, and enjoyed many visits to the theatre.

Bonington’s Beached Vessels and a Wagon near Trouville (c 1825) may have been painted when he visited Trouville with Eugène Isabey after their return from England in the summer of 1825. Some have suggested the wagon is another touch of Constable, but Noon points out that such vehicles were commonly used around the coast, and appear in other paintings by Bonington.

In the Forest at Fontainebleau (c 1825) was probably painted after his visit to London, and together with a related graphite sketch, is the only evidence for Bonington having visited Fontainebleau. The rocks are shown in a particularly painterly style, suggesting that it may have been started if not completed en plein air.

On the Coast of Picardy (c 1825-6) shows the Channel coast, probably just north of Le Havre, an area that was to prove popular later with JMW Turner and later still the Impressionists.

Bonington doesn’t appear to have painted many woodland landscapes, but his A Wooded Lane (c 1825) was probably influenced by Paul Huet, with whom Bonington travelled around Rouen and Mantes in the autumn of 1825, rather than Constable.

Bonington’s finest painting of woodland is undoubtedly his Near Rouen from that same campaign with Huet in 1825. Showing Rouen in the distance, it appears to have been a plein air oil sketch, with particular emphasis on development of the trees, which pop out in their detail from its roughed-in sky.

Barges on a River (c 1825-6) was probably painted during that trip too, in the vicinity of Mantes. The windmill seen behind the trees is reminiscent of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting.

Tomorrow’s article will cover the last three years of Bonington’s paintings.

References

Biography by Bruce MacEvoy
Wikipedia’s short article

Noon P (2008) Richard Parkes Bonington, The Complete Paintings, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 13421 6. Note that numbers given after the year of each painting in the captions refer to Noon’s catalogue.

A century ago today, on 15 July 1924, one of the most influential Japanese Impressionist painters died: Viscount Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (Kuroda Kiyoteru). For more than a quarter of a century he was one of the leading Japanese artists who trained in France and took his art back to lead the transformation of painting in Japan.

The son of a samurai in Kagoshima (in the far south-west of Japan), he moved to Tokyo, where he first learned English, then switched to French. He travelled to Paris in 1884 to study law, being supported by his brother-in-law, a member of the Japanese diplomatic mission in France.

However, after two years there, he changed to study painting in the atelier of Raphael Collin, where he met Kume Keiichirō, also a student of Collin’s; together they explored plein air painting. In 1890 he moved to the international artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris.

He painted this Woman Reading in about 1890, making it one of his earliest surviving works.

The following year his style had become more painterly, in this Girl of Bréhat (1891). Bréhat is an island just off the northern coast of Brittany.

In the autumn of that year, he painted this fine landscape of Dead Leaves (1891), with its rich colours and textures.

Returning to Paris in 1893, he painted Morning Toilette (destroyed during World War Two), the first painting of a nude to be shown in public in Japan. He then went back to Japan, and started to paint Japanese subjects in his Impressionist style. By introducing Impressionist light and colour to yōga (Western style) painting, in what was known as ‘Southern School’ or murasaki (violet), he was a major influence in developing it from its Barbizon style. He transformed Yamamoto Hōsui’s Seikōkan academy into the Tenshin Dōjō.

His Maiko Girl from 1893 is less controversial, and considered one of his masterworks.

Morning Toilette caused uproar when it was first exhibited in Kyoto in 1895, as did his other paintings shown at the yōga salon later that year. The following year, together with Kume Keiichirō, he formed a new group known as the Hakubakai (‘The White Horse Society’), to promote yōga painting in its thirteen exhibitions until it dissolved in 1911.

In 1896 he was appointed director of a new department of Western Painting at the forerunner of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he surprisingly placed emphasis on the teaching of history painting.

Sunny Day (1897) returns to painterly brushstrokes and brilliant colour.

His triptych of nudes Wisdom Impression Sentiment (before 1898) won a silver medal at the International Exposition held in Paris in 1900, and in 1910 he was appointed an Imperial Court painter.

His later landscape paintings continued to develop his style, as seen in this Sun Setting on a Wild Garden from 1910.

Throughout his career, he made vigorous oil sketches in front of the motif, here At Kamakura (at Kotsubo) in 1915. Kamakura is a former capital of Japan, on the coast to the south of Tokyo, and a site for many of Kuroda’s sketches.

He inherited the title of Viscount in 1917, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the French Legion d’Honneur. He was finally awarded the Order of the Rising Sun immediately after his death in 1924.

Kuroda was trained to paint in Impressionist style, and did so throughout his career. He was one of the founding fathers of the Western painting tradition in Japan, thus an artist of singular importance in its culture. He was also widely acclaimed in his day as a painter of significance in Europe, yet he is now hardly known outside the country of his birth.

Reference

Wikipedia

Two hundred years ago today, on 12 July 1824, the French artist Eugène Boudin was born. In the first of these two articles celebrating his life and work, I looked at his formative influence on French Impressionism, in particular his mentorship of the young Claude Monet. This culminated in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, where Boudin showed a total of thirteen works. However, his career appeared little affected by the event, and he didn’t return to show his work at the group’s later exhibitions, instead concentrating on achieving success in the Salon, and improving his marketing.

He continued to make painterly oil sketches in front of the motif, such as this of Washerwoman near Trouville from 1872-76, featuring another of his wonderful skies.

He sketched the Beach at Trouville repeatedly. This view is from 1880.

The following year he painted this view of the Bridge over the Touques at Trouville (1881), seen at low tide. This modest river runs from Calvados to meet the Channel at Trouville. That year Paul Durand-Ruel started representing him as his dealer; two years later the Durand-Ruel Gallery staged Boudin’s first one-man exhibition in Paris, and he was also awarded a second class medal in the Salon.

In Ary Scheffer Place, Dordrecht (1884) he sketched a more urban scene, although still with water at its heart.

In Parc Cordier in Trouville (c 1880-5), under another of his masterly skies, he captures the texture of foliage particularly well. Following his early inspiration by Troyon, he painted many views of cattle and the fields immediately inland of the north French coast.

He painted these Washerwomen by the River in about 1880-5.

In 1885, Boudin visited the south of France during the winter, and from 1890 onwards spent the winter months there, so that he could continue to paint. In 1887 his works were shown in the USA, where he was again represented by Durand-Ruel, and further exhibitions followed in France.

Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. The Mouth of the Somme (1891) is another more colourful view featuring the setting sun, further north-east along the coast from Le Havre.

In the early 1890s, when he was in his late sixties, Eugène Boudin became full post-Impressionist in Cliffs at Étretat (1890-94), one of several paintings he made then of the cliffs and beach.

Once he started visiting the Mediterranean coast, he painted many of its views, including The Bay of Fourmis (1892). Still unpopulated and unspoilt at that time, this is situated between Nice and Monaco, not far from the border with Italy.

View of Antibes. The Quay, Morning (1893) is on the Côte d’Azur between Cannes and Nice, again not far from the Italian border. High speed direct train services to this area had started back in the 1880s, opening access to artists and tourists alike.

Boudin visited Venice several times in the 1890s. Among his paintings there is Piazzetta San Marco in Venice (1895), which adopts the same view and composition as Renoir’s earlier Doge’s Palace, Venice from 1881. This painting is sometimes mis-titled as the Piazza San Marco, which it doesn’t show. The tower is the high Campanile.

Boudin’s health deteriorated rapidly in 1898, and he died on 8 August that year. It’s estimated that he produced over 4,000 oil paintings, and over 7,000 pastels, watercolours, and drawings. But more than anything else, his art formed the basis of French Impressionism, and his friendship with Claude Monet brought some of the greatest paintings of the century.

References

Wikipedia
Rehs Galleries

Bergeret-Gourbin A-M (1996) Eugène Boudin. Peintures et Dessins. Catalogue Raisonné Musée Eugène Boudin Honfleur, Somogy Éditions d’Art. ISBN 978 2 8505 6250 1.
His latest catalogue raisonné is by R Schmit, in three main volumes, 1973, with two supplementary volumes, in 1984 and 1993, all published by Galerie Schmit, Paris.

In a week’s time, I will be marking the bicentenary of the birth of one of the most important influences on French Impressionist art, who mentored the young Claude Monet, and exhibited at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874: Eugène Louis Boudin, who was born on 12 July 1824. This is the first of two articles briefly tracing his career and influence, with a selection of his paintings.

Boudin was born in Honfleur, on the north coast of France at the mouth of the River Seine opposite Le Havre. His father worked on the ferry making the short crossing to Le Havre, and in 1835 the family moved to Le Havre, where the following year Eugène started work at a printer’s then in a stationery shop.

In 1844 he opened his own stationers that also framed paintings, but the following year Millet saw some of his amateur paintings, and Boudin resolved to make painting his future. His shop framed the work of, and sold art materials to, Couture, Troyon, and Millet. It was a centre of artistic activity which attracted the young Claude Monet, who also grew up in Le Havre, to seek Boudin’s counsel and instruction.

By 1847, Boudin had made his way to Paris, where he started to study paintings in museums and galleries. He returned to Le Havre, and in 1851 was awarded a scholarship by his local council to study painting in Paris. His application was supported by Thomas Couture and Constant Troyon.

Until 1860, he lived in Paris, copying paintings in the Louvre, and returned to the north coast to paint there en plein air whenever he could. However, he didn’t apparently engage in the anticipated studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, and remained largely self-taught. He had his first painting accepted for the Salon of 1859, two years later he worked with Troyon, and the following year made friends with Jongkind. Two years later he met with Monet and Jongkind and the three painted together in Honfleur.

On the last weekend in August, 1857, Boudin visited the Finistère region’s largest religious celebration, and made sketches in oils, including this study for The Pardon of Sainte-Anne-La-Palud (1858). These he used to paint a more traditionally finished oil painting, shown in the Paris Salon the following year, where it was praised by Baudelaire.

More typical of his early finished paintings, The Beach (1864) shows an assorted gathering beneath one of his wonderful skies. These became such a feature of his work that Corot dubbed him ‘master of the skies’.

The Beach at Villerville (1864) shows a dusk setting unusual among his beach paintings. This is set in another small seaside community between Trouville and Honfleur.

Boudin travelled from Paris to paint On the Beach, Dieppe in 1864.

For a while, Boudin painted celebrities including Princess Pauline Metternich on the Beach (1865-7) when they visited the seaside around Honfleur and Le Havre, but as he became more successful in the Salon, he dropped these opportunistic sketches.

He also painted many ports, ships and boats, and riverside scenes, such as Village by a River (c 1867), whose location remains uncertain.

His oil sketches, here of a Lady in White on the Beach at Trouville (1869), were amazingly loose and painterly, and clear inspiration to Claude Monet and the Impressionists more generally.

He started to achieve commercial success in 1864, his income peaking in 1872, but declining thereafter. His friendship with and support to Monet resulted in him being invited to take part in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874. His first entry in its catalogue could be any of three paintings.

The first two, both known as Camaret, Le Toulinguet (c 1871) and showing almost identical views, include the version above in a private collection, and another now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (not shown). Boudin painted at Camaret, in Brittany, each year between 1870 and 1873.

The third possibility is this, Camaret, Le Toulinguet (1872), in a private collection.

He also painted scenes of local people and their activities along the northern coast, such as this Fishermen’s Wives at the Seaside (1872).

According to the exhibition catalogue, Boudin showed a total of thirteen works in the First Impressionist Exhibition in Nadar’s studio in Paris, described as:

• Le Toulinguet, côtes de Camaret, Finistère (see above),
• Shore at Portrieux, Côtes du Nord (two paintings),
• Four pastel sky studies,
• Two other pastel studies,
• Four watercolours of the beach at Trouville.

Quite a few of his watercolours have survived, and appear mostly quick plein air studies anticipating more substantial works in oil. Sadly, most of his pastels seem to have been lost, although this suggests that he used the medium relatively often.

References

Wikipedia
Rehs Galleries

Bergeret-Gourbin A-M (1996) Eugène Boudin. Peintures et Dessins. Catalogue Raisonné Musée Eugène Boudin Honfleur, Somogy Éditions d’Art. ISBN 978 2 8505 6250 1.
His latest catalogue raisonné is by R Schmit, in three main volumes, 1973, with two supplementary volumes, in 1984 and 1993, all published by Galerie Schmit, Paris.