This page forms part of a series of pages dedicated to the many artists who worked in Trouville-sur-Mer. A full list of all the artists with a link to their works can be found at the bottom of this page.
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.
NOTE: Click on any image 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.
NOTE: You can see the cliffs of Le Havre/Sainte-Adresse in the distance.
TODAY: Both piers and lighthouses still exist today. The one of the left is in Deauville, the right one in Trouville-sur-Mer. They are divided by the Touques river that flows here into the sea.
TODAY: The beach at Trouville is still a very popular place during the summer and gets very crowded and colorful.
TODAY: There are no longer any beach huts as seen in the paintings, they are now replaced mostly by colorful beach tents.
TODAY: The wooden boardwalk still exists today, and extends from the river to the end of the Trouville beach.
TODAY: The Malakoff Tower still stands today and can be seen from the beach. The tower (and house) was built in 1855 by Charles Mozin (a painter) who discovered Trouville and wanted to return.
TODAY: This is the fish market that still exists today. You can buy your fresh as it comes off the boats. You can even eat on the spot.
TODAY: There still is a small ferry operating daily between Deauville and Trouville. It crosses the Touques river in a few minutes. When the tide is low, a walkway is installed allowing you to cross the (dry) river, see photo—>
Click Me!!!
Villerville
The village of Villerville (population: 700) lies to the North of Trouville-sur-Mer along the coast.
Boudin painted in several places in Normandy ( a link “⇠” to his works will appear below for each city when published):
- Brittany
- Brest
- Camaret-sur-Mer
- Daoulas
- Hanvec
- Hopital-Camfrout
- Le Faou
- Plougastel
- Saint-Quay-Portrieux
- Hauts-de-France
- Abbeville
- Berck
- Boulogne-sur-Mer
- Dunkerque
- Etaples
- Saint-Valery-sur-Somme
- Normandy
- Bourdainville
- Caen ⇠
- Caudebec-en-Caux ⇠
- Cherbourg ⇠
- Deauville (and surroundings) ⇠
- Dieppe ⇠
- Etretat ⇠
- Fecamp ⇠
- Honfleur ⇠
- Le Havre (and surroundings) ⇠
- Le Treport
- Rouen
- Trouville-sur-Mer (and surroundings) ⇠
- Nouvelle-Aquitaine
- Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur
- Antibes
- Villefranche-sur-Mer
Trouville-sur-Mer has been an in-spot for artists and wealthy patrons. Located next to Deauville and sharing the same railway station,many artists came here to work and mingle with the high-societe folks.
Here is a list of artists who working in Trouville (a link “⇠” to that artist’s works will appear when published). An “*” after an artist’s name means that the artist did not work in Trouville itself, but in a nearby town.
- 🇫🇷 Binet, George ⇠
- 🇺🇸 Boggs, Frank Myers ⇠
- 🇬🇧 Bonington, Richard Parkes ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Boudin, Eugene-Louis ⇠
- 🇬🇧 Boys, Thomas Shotter ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Bruelle, Gaston ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Caillebotte, Gustave ⇠
- 🇺🇸 Chapman, Conrad Wise ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Chapuis, Pierre ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Ciceri, Eugene ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Courbet, Gustave ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Daubigny, Charles-Francois ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Dubourg, Louis-Alexandre ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Dufy, Raoul ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Gernez, Paul-Elie ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Guerard, Henri * ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Hervier, Louis Adolphe ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Huet, Paul ⇠
- 🇳🇱 Jongkind, Johan ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Lebourg, Albert ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Lepine, Stanislas ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Letellier, Emile-Andre ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Loir, Luigi ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Monet, Claude ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Mozin, Charles Louis ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Noel, Jules Achille ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Pecrus, Charles Francois ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Petitjean, Edmond Marie ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Signac, Paul ⇠
- 🇳🇴 Thaulow, Fritz * ⇠
- 🇫🇷 Truffaut, Fernand-Fortune ⇠
NOTE: You can subscribe to our new articles by entering your email address in the box on the right column (or at the very bottom of this article) and clicking on the button “Subscribe”.
You will need to check your incoming emails and validate your subscription. If you can’t see an email from us, check your Spam folder. Without validating your email address, you will not get notifications from us. WE WILL NEVER GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES TO ANYONE!
Related Posts
- 93
Claude Monet is without any doubt the most famous impressionist painter. He started the movement, and he was the master of it. Although he was born in Paris, France (and died in Giverny, Normandy, France), his heart was Normandy, particularly the Normandy coastline. His family moved to Le Havre in… - 91
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau."… - 90
Frits Thaulow was a Norwegian Impressionist painter, best known for his naturalistic depictions of landscape. Here are his paintings for Villerville, a town close to Trouville-sur-Mer. - 86
Pierre Chapuis was a French painter who was also known for his theatre decors and his water paintings of Deauville and Trouville. Not much else is known about this artist. Here are his works for Trouville-sur-Mer, Normandy. - 86
Conrad Wise Chapman (1842 – 1910) was an American painter who served in the Confederate States Army from 1861 to 1865. Conrad Wise Chapman was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Europe where his father, John Gadsby Chapman, was working as an artist. After the end of the…
