Eugene Louis Boudin

Le Havre – The Artists – Boudin, Eugene

This page forms part of a series of pages dedicated to the many artists who painted in Le Havre. 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.

Below is but a small sample of his works, since he painted many of the ships coming into the port.

NOTE: Click on any painting below for a bigger version (no new window will open).

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.

NOTE: A blue box like this one, means there is an explanation or a note.

1852 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Francois Ier Tower at Le Havre
1852 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Francois Ier Tower at Le Havre

NOTE: The Francois 1re tower no longer exists.

1854 Eugene Boudin - The Francois I Tower at Le Havre
1854 – Eugene Boudin – The Francois I Tower at Le Havre
1864 Eugene Boudin - Entering the Port of Le Havre
1864 – Eugene Boudin – Entering the Port of Le Havre

NOTE: Today the entry/exit of the port has not much changed, apart that there are no longer any towers. The painting was made from the inside of the harbour.

1864 Eugene Boudin - Entrance to the Port
1864 – Eugene Boudin – Entrance to the Port
1864 - Eugene Louis Boudin - Le Havre. A Basin
1864 – Eugene Louis Boudin – Le Havre. A Basin
1865 Eugene Boudin - Le Havre, the Outer Harbor
1865 – Eugene Boudin – Le Havre, the Outer Harbor
1866 Eugene Boudin - Evening
1866 – Eugene Boudin – Evening
1867 Eugene Boudin - Basin of Eure
1867 – Eugene Boudin – Basin of Eure

NOTE: Today, the “Bassin de l’Eure” still exists. It is used mostly by river cruise ships, and it has the naval/maritime school.

1872 Eugene Boudin - The Outer Harbor
1872 – Eugene Boudin – The Outer Harbor
1874 Eugene Boudin - Casimir-Delavigne-Basin-at-Le-Havre
1874 – Eugene Boudin – Casimir-Delavigne-Basin-at-Le-Havre
1875 Eugene Boudin - The quays in Le Havre
1875 – Eugene Boudin – The quays in Le Havre
1879 Eugene Boudin - Le Havre, Three Master at Anchor in the Harbor
1879 – Eugene Boudin – Le Havre, Three Master at Anchor in the Harbor
1882 Eugene Boudin - The Port of Le Havre at Sunset
1882 – Eugene Boudin – The Port of Le Havre at Sunset
1883 Eugene Boudin - Entrance to the Harbor, Le Havre
1883 – Eugene Boudin – Entrance to the Harbor, Le Havre
1884 Eugene Boudin - Le Havre, Sunset at Low Tide
1884 – Eugene Boudin – Le Havre, Sunset at Low Tide
1884 Eugene Boudin - The Port
1884 – Eugene Boudin – The Port
1888 Eugene Boudin - Entrance to the Port
1888 – Eugene Boudin – Entrance to the Port
1885 Eugene Louis Boudin - Le Havre. The sea at sunset
1885 – Eugene Louis Boudin – Le Havre. The sea at sunset
1888 Eugene Louis Boudin - Le Havre. The outer harbor
1888 – Eugene Louis Boudin – Le Havre. The outer harbor
1889 Eugene Boudin - Anchorage-Bar
1889 – Eugene Boudin – Anchorage-Bar
1889 Eugene Boudin - Entrance to the Port of Le Havre
1889 – Eugene Boudin – Entrance to the Port of Le Havre
1890 Eugene Boudin - Basin
1890 – Eugene Boudin – Basin
1892 Eugene Boudin - Outer Harbour, Evening Tide
1892 – Eugene Boudin – Outer Harbour, Evening Tide
1892 Eugene Boudin - The Commerce Basin
1892 – Eugene Boudin – The Commerce Basin

NOTE: The “Bassin du Commerce” still exists today, but it no longer allows ships to come in. Instead it’s used for sailing school for beginners since there are no waves. At the end of the basin you will now find the famous Oscar Niemeyer “Volcan” building.

1892 Eugene Boudin - The Port of Le Havre
1892 – Eugene Boudin – The Port of Le Havre
1892 Eugene Boudin - The Trade Basin
1892 – Eugene Boudin – The Trade Basin

NOTE: The “Trade Basin” and “Commerce Basin” are the same. See the note above.

1895 Eugene Boudin - Entrance during a Storm
1895 – Eugene Boudin – Entrance during a Storm

NOTE: The current lighthouse, in the same spot, replaced the one destroyed by the Germans at the end of WWII.

1895 Eugene Boudin - The Basin De La Barre
1895 – Eugene Boudin – The Basin De La Barre

NOTE: The “Bassin De La Barre” still exists but is no longer used by ships but for rowing training/competition.

1895 Eugene Louis Boudin - Le Havre. The Bassin de la Barre
1895 – Eugene Louis Boudin – Le Havre. The Bassin de la Barre

Sainte-Adresse

The city of Sainte-Adresse (population: 7,400) is an immediate suburb of Le Havre and lies to the North/West alongside the coast. It shares the same seaside promenade with Le Havre.

1894 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Shore at Sainte-Adresse. Low tide
1894 – Eugene Boudin – Shore at Sainte-Adresse. Low tide

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

Here are the painters/artists who painted in Le Havre (a “*” indicates that the artist did not worked directly in Le Havre itself, instead worked closeby, a link “” to the artist’s works will appear below when published):

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Actual Basin de l’Eure today. Lighthouse ship in the Le Havre harbour at the Bassin de l’Eure (black building is the naval school)
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