Steg in Trouville

In the 1860s a train line reached the Normandy coast and turned Trouville from a fishing harbour into the seaside resort of fashionable Paris. Eugene Boudin painted exactly that change. Here the smart crowds gather on the new jetty, built to deepen the channel for boats and then taken over by the visitors as a place to promenade. The women hold onto their hats against the Channel wind, the sky takes up most of the canvas, and the fishing boats still head out past all the finery. Boudin worked these beaches for years and told a young Claude Monet to paint outdoors, in front of the thing itself. This one is dated 1867, the crowd dressed in the height of Second Empire style.