Einfahrt zum Hafen von Trouville

Eugene Boudin grew up on this coast, in the Normandy ports of Honfleur and Le Havre, and he spent his life painting its restless Channel skies. By the time he set up here at Trouville, the little harbor town had become a fashionable resort, freshly linked to Paris by rail and crowded each summer with holidaymakers off the trains. This view looks at the mouth of the river Touques, where two jetties open to the sea and, at low tide, boats sit stranded on the sand. Boudin gives most of the canvas to the sky — the moving clouds that earned him the nickname the king of skies — and only a thin strip of turquoise sea beneath. The young Monet, whom Boudin had coaxed outdoors to paint, never forgot those lessons.