Eugene Boudin
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Eugene Boudin (July 12, 1824 - August 8, 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was born in Honfleur, Normandy.
The son of a sailor, Boudin grew up in the port of Le Havre, on the Normandy coast, where his family moved in 1835 when he was eleven years old. He began work the next year as an assistant in a stationery and framing store before opening his own small shop. There he came into contact with artists working in the area and exhibited in his shop the paintings of both Troyon and Jean-François Millet who, along with Eugène Isabey and Couture whom he also met at this time, encouraged the young Boudin to follow an artistic career. At the age of twenty-two he abandoned the world of commerce, taking up painting full time, and traveled to Paris the following year and then through Flanders. In 1850 he earned a scholarship that enabled him to move to Paris permanently although he often returned to paint in Normandy and, from 1855, made regular trips to Brittany.
Dutch seventeenth century masters had a profound influence upon him and, on meeting the Dutch painter Jongkind, who had already made his mark in French artistic circles, was advised by his new friend to work en plein air. He also worked with Troyon and Isabey and in 1859 met Gustave Courbet who introduced him to Charles Baudelaire, the first critic to draw Boudin’s talents to public attention when the artist made his debut at the 1859 Salon.
In 1857 Boudin met Claude Monet who spent several months working directly with Boudin in his studio. The two remained lifelong friends and Monet later paid tribute to Boudin’s early influence. Boudin joined Monet and his young friends in what was to be called the First Impressionist exhibition in 1874 but never really considered himself a radical or innovator. Boudin’s growing reputation enabled him to travel extensively in the 1870s; he visited Belgium, Holland, and southern France, and from 1892 to 1895 made regular trips to Venice. He continued to exhibit at the Salons, receiving a third place medal at the Salon of 1881, and a gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. In 1892 Boudin was made a knight of the Légion d'honneur, a somewhat tardy recognition of his talents and influence on the art of his contemporaries.