Eugene-Louis Boudin

Etretat – The Artists – Boudin, Eugene-Louis

This page forms part of a series of pages dedicated to the many artists who worked in Etretat. A full list of all the artists with a link to their works can be found at the bottom of this page.

Eugene Louis Boudin
Eugene Louis Boudin

Movement(s): Impressionism

Eugene Louis Boudin (1824 – 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summary and economic, garnered the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire; and Corot called him the “King of the skies“.

Born at Honfleur, Boudin was the son of a harbor pilot, and at age 10 the young boy worked on a steamboat that ran between Le Havre and Honfleur. In 1835 the family moved to Le Havre, where Boudin’s father opened a store for stationery and picture frames. Here the young Eugene worked, later opening his own small shop. Boudin’s father had thus abandoned seafaring, and his son gave it up too, having no real vocation for it, though he preserved to his last days much of a sailor’s character: frankness, accessibility, and open-heartedness.

In his shop, in which pictures were framed, Boudin came into contact with artists working in the area and exhibited in the shop the paintings of Constant Troyon and Jean-François Millet, who, along with Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Thomas Couture whom he met during this time, encouraged young Boudin to follow an artistic career.

At the age of 22 he abandoned the world of commerce, started painting full-time, and travelled to Paris the following year and then through Flanders. In 1850 he earned a scholarship that enabled him to move to Paris, where he enrolled as a student in the studio of Eugene Isabey and worked as a copyist at the Louvre.

To supplement his income he often returned to paint in Normandy and, from 1855, made regular trips to Brittany. On 14 January 1863 he married the 28-year-old Breton woman Marie-Anne Guedes in Le Havre and set up home in Paris.

Dutch 17th-century masters profoundly influenced him, and on meeting the Dutch painter Johan Jongkind, who had already made his mark in French artistic circles, Boudin was advised by his new friend to paint outdoors (en plein air).

In 1857/58 Boudin befriended the young Claude Monet, then only 18, and persuaded him to give up his teenage caricature drawings and to become a landscape painter, helping to instil in him a love of bright hues and the play of light on water later evident in Monet’s Impressionist paintings. The two remained lifelong friends and Monet later paid tribute to Boudin’s early influence. Boudin joined Monet and his young friends in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1873, but never considered himself a radical or innovator.

Late in his life, after the death of his wife in 1889, Boudin spent every winter in the south of France as a refuge from his own ill-health, and from 1892 to 1895 made regular trips to Venice. In 1898, recognizing that his life was almost spent, he returned to his home at Deauville, to die on 8 August within sight of the English Channel and under the Channel skies he had painted so often.

He was buried according to his wishes in the Saint-Vincent Cemetery in Montmartre, Paris.

Click here to read Boudin’s full bio on Wikipedia.

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NOTE: A black box like this one, means that there is an explanation text about today’s situation of the painting above it.
NOTE: Click on this photo icon anywhere below a painting to see a photo of what the area looks like today.

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1888 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Amont cliff
1888 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Amont cliff

NOTE: The Porte d’Amont is a sea arch that lies to the right of the beach of Etretat.

1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Aval cliff, Etretat
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Aval cliff, Etretat

TODAY: The Porte d’Aval is the most visible of three sea arches at Etretat. It lies to the left of the Etretat beach.

1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Cliffs of Etretat
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Cliffs of Etretat
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat, Washers on the beach, low tide, Aval cliff
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat, Washers on the beach, low tide, Aval cliff
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat, Aval cliff
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat, Aval cliff
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat, Aval cliff at sunset
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat, Aval cliff at sunset
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat. Fishing boats and fishermen on the beach
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat. Fishing boats and fishermen on the beach

NOTE: Etretat does not have an harbor but has fishing boats. They are dragged onto the beach when not in use.

1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat, stranded boats and Amont cliff
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat, stranded boats and Amont cliff

TODAY: The Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde chapel (built in 1854) on the cliff is still there. It is a seamen’s chapel, but was greatly destroyed in WWII by the Germans and rebuilt in 1950.

1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The washerwomen of Etretat
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The washerwomen of Etretat
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Washers on the beach, low tide, Aval cliff, Etretat
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Washers on the beach, low tide, Aval cliff, Etretat
1892 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Etretat low tide
1892 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Etretat low tide
???? - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Sunset at Etretat
???? – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Sunset at Etretat

Boudin painted in several places in Normandy ( a link “” to his works will appear below for each city when published):

Etretat is the second most popular and visited place in Normandy (the first being Mont Saint-Michel). And since it was popular, many artists came here to be inspired by its nature and scenic environments. Here is a list of artists who worked in Etretat (a link “⇠” to their work will appear when published).

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Today: Porte d'Amont seen from the beach
Today: Porte d’Amont seen from the beach
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Today: Porte d'Aval seen from the beach
Today: Porte d’Aval seen from the beach
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Today: Fishing fleet dragged on land
Today: Fishing fleet dragged on land
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Today: The Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde chapel on top of the cliffs
Today: The Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde chapel on top of the cliffs
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