Boats at low tide, Trouville

Description of the artwork

At the end of his life, crowned with success, Boudin ventured down new paths, claiming to ‘leave [his] painting [...] the aspect of the sketch’. This work is one of a series painted in Trouville and Deauville between 1894 and 1897. In the views taken in Trouville, Boudin liked to position himself at the end of the channel, facing the entrance to the port, so that the landscape is often framed, on the left and right, by the two jetties that are not to be found in our work. Here, a single jetty closes off practically the entire horizon. The fishermen's boats in the foreground and background are all flying the tricolour, and one can also be seen at the far end of the composition, suggesting that the scene takes place in July, at the time of the Fête Nationale.

Here, Boudin's oft-repeated performance is the pretext for a fast-paced composition. The movement of the clouds, combined with the verticality of the boat in the foreground, give a static rhythm to the composition, in contrast to the moving sky, where the wind seems to be blowing away the grey clouds to reveal a soon-to-be blue sky. The boats punctuate the composition and link the sky with the land, where we can still make out the traces of a sea that will soon have returned. The sunlight illuminates the right-hand side of the composition, creating a contrast between the parts still covered by clouds and those newly illuminated by the light. Boudin captures the movement of things at the same time as their form and colour: the clouds disappear towards the left, the water shimmers in the pool, the boat passes by, the wind flutters in the French flags, he writes the synthesis of elements and beings in action.

Origin

Atelier Boudin sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 20-21, 1899, n°4
Hotel Drouot Paris , april 25-26 1906, M. sale, n°5

Literature

Robert Schmit, Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898, volume III, Paris 1973, no. 3628, p. 384