Le quai de Camaret, Pêcheur attendant la marée by Eugène Boudin
Eugène Boudin gained considerable recognition in the mid-nineteenth century for his beach scenes. In a way, he documented the growth in popularity of the northern French coastal towns among the middle and upper classes of Paris. By the 1860s, a direct railroad had been built between the French capital and the coast of Normandy, allowing the city elite to frequently escape to the countryside to enjoy the beach or watch horse races. Soon, lavish hotels and casinos transformed the seaside villages into resort towns. Boudin’s paintings like Le quai de Camaret demonstrate this transformation over the course of decades by combining and transcending genres. He utilized elements of landscape, maritime painting, and genre scenes, painting fashionable ladies on the beach as easily as the local fishermen at the wharf.
Inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes and the contemporary Barbizon artists, Boudin painted en plein air and employed loose brushstrokes. This made him one of the forerunners of the Impressionist movement. Painters like Monet and Pissarro held Boudin in high regard, inviting the elder artist to join them when they organized the first independent Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Boudin created Le quai de Camaret only a year before Boudin participated in this show.
Eugène Louis Boudin (1824 – 1898) Le quai de Camaret, Pêcheur attendant la marée, Oil on canvas: 14.5 x 23 inches, Signed and dated ’73