Beach of Trouville|Eugène Boudin |Search Collection | The National Museum of Western Art

Updated 09 April 2025

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On Display

Permanent collection

Eugène Boudin

Honfleur, 1824 - Deauville, 1898

Beach of Trouville

Date	1867
Materials and Techniques	oil on canvas
Size（cm）	63 x 89
Inscriptions	Signed and dated lower left: E. Boudin. 67.
Credit Line	Purchased
Standard ref.	Schmit 403
Category	Paintings
Collection Number	P.1985-0001

Boudin's creation of numerous outdoor sketches meant that he left few large-scale works. He only created 91 works for the Salon during his career and only painted 15 works before 1870. The most important of these early lively, powerful works is Tourville Bay of 1860 now in the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts. The work here ranks second in importance to the Minneapolis work. In the last part of his critique of the 1859 Salon, Baudelaire makes the following warning, "Here we lack works that bring together the scale and beauty born in the gathering of people and monuments that I have to call urban landscapes." It is not clear whether Boudin moved to take this advice, but with the Minneapolis work in the salon of the following year, Beach at Tourville (Private collection, Upperville) in the 1866 Salon and this work, he changed his focus from natural landscape scenes to groups of people gathered at the beaches, rendering them in a frieze-like form. Tourville, a site that Boudin visited incessantly during this period, was known as the most popular resort for Parisians escaping the heat of summer, and one could clearly see the "modern life" mentioned by Baudelaire at this coastal resort. This work was one of the results of Boudin's experiments with outdoor scenes of groups of people that he began in 1860. Boudin's sky, with its broad sense of depth created by brush nuances, fits Baudelaire's description of the "world of meteorological beauty." Boudin painted the lively, bright sense of beach resort life in the groups below this sky, arranging them in a frieze-like band across the canvas. The overall gray tone of the painting further emphasizes the strong red accents. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no.69)

Provenance

Galerie Georges Petit, Paris; Francisco Llobet, Buenos Aires; Baronne Alexandrine de Rothschild, Paris; Rosenberg & Stiebel Inc., New York; Henry Ford II, Detroit; Auc. Henry Ford II, Christie’s New York, May 13, 1980, no. 1; Pierre Jourdan-Barry, Paris; Galerie Schmit, Paris; Purchased by the NMWA, 1985.

Exhibition History

1867: Salon de 1867, Paris, 0 1867 - 0 1867, cat. no. 180
1984: Eugène Boudin 1824-1898, Galerie Schmit, Paris, 0 1984 - 0 1984, cat. no. 13, repr.
1988: Paintings by French Artists from the Late 19th Century in Japanese Collections, The State Puskin Museum, Moscow, 12 January 1988 - 10 February 1988, The State Hermitage Museum, Leningrard, 16 February-24 March, cat. no. 8, repr.
1996: The Crossing Visions: European and Modern Japanese Art from the Collections of The National Museum of Western Art & The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 20 July 1996 - 8 September 1996, cat. no. 1
2013: Monet, An Eye for Landscapes: Innovation in 19th Century French Landscape Paintings, Pola Museum of Art, 13 July 2013 - 24 November 2013, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 7 December 2013-9 March 2014, cat. no. 5, col. repr.
2014: The Rings from The Hashimoto Collection of The National Museum of Western Art, The National Museum of Western Art, 8 July 2014 - 15 September 2014, cat. no. 289
2015: Japan's Love for Impressionism: From Monet to Renoir, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 8 October 2015 - 21 February 2016, cat. no. 66, col. repr.
2017: Life: In Search of a Paradise, Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, 26 August 2017 - 5 November 2017, cat. no. 3-2
2022: In Dialogue with Nature - from Friedrich, Monet and Van Gogh to Richter, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 4 June 2022 - 11 September 2022, cat. no. 1

Bibliography

1867: Darcel, Alfred. Les artistes normands au Salon de 1867. Rouen, 1867, p. 6.
1924: Colección Francisco Llobet: pintura moderna 1830-1924. Primer Salón de la Sociedad Amigos del Arte, Buenos Aires, July 12, 1924, no. 63, repr.
1930: Portalègre, B. de. La collection Llobet. L’Amour de l’Art. no. 7, July, 1930, pp. 282, 287, repr.
1973: Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin 1824-1898. 4 vols, Paris, 1973-1984, no. 403, repr.
1980: Burge, Christopher. The Henry Ford II Sale. Christie’s Review of the Season 1980. London, 1980, pp. 144, 148, repr.
1982: Selz, Jean. E. Boudin. Paris, 1982, p. 39, repr.
1987: Jean-Aubry, G.; Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin. Neuchâtel, 1987, p. 87, repr.
1988: Paintings by French Artists from the Late 19th to Early 20th Century in Japanese Collections (exh. cat.). The State Pushkin Museum; The State Hermitage State Museum, [n.p.], 1988, cat. no. 8, repr.
1988: Annual bulletin of the National Museum of Western Art. No. 20 (1985), 1988, Mabuchi, Akiko. New Acquisitions 1985. pp. 2, 9-11, col. repr, Catalogue of the New Acquisitions 1985. pp. 18-19.
1989: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1989 (Japanese, preface in Japanese and English), no. 55, repr.
1990: Catalogue of painting acquisitions: 1979-1989. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1990, pp. 19-20.
2009: Masterpieces of The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art; Tokyo, The Western Art Foundation, 2009, no. 69, col. repr.
2013: MONET, An Eye For Landscapes: Innovation in 19th Century French Landscape Paintings(exh. cat.). Tokyo, TBS, c2013, cat. no. 5, col. repr.
2013: Masterpieces: The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, The Western Art Foundation, 2013 (Japanese, preface in Japanese and English), no. 81, col. repr.
2015: Japan's Love for Impressionism: From Monet to Renoir (exh. cat.). Marks-Hanssen, Beate, ed. Bonn, Bundeskunsthalle, 2015, pp. 112, 245, cat. no. 66, col. repr.
2017: Life: In Search of a Paradise (exh. cat.). Ito, Masatoshi, ed. Tokyo, My Book Service Inc., 2017, pp. 76-77, 313, cat. no. 3-2, col. repr.
2022: In Dialogue with Nature: from Friedrich, Monet and Van Gogh to Richter (exh. cat.). Jingaoka, Megumi; Shinfuji, Atsushi; Yomiuri Shimbun, Museum Exhibition Department, eds. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; Yomiuri Shimbun; NHK; NHK Promotions, 2022, pp. 60, 254, cat. no. 1, col. repr.

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