Beach at Trouville

A railway branch reached Trouville in 1863, and within a year or two the Normandy sand was an annexe of Paris. Boudin was there through the summers with small panels, painting the crowd rather than the sea, women in crinolines sitting in rows on hired chairs with their backs to the water. In letters he admitted to some shame at painting people so idle while fishermen and field hands went unpainted, though he kept at it, partly because the clothes and the weather changed every hour and gave him something new by afternoon. The National Gallery of Art in Washington dates this one to 1864 or 1865. It is painted on a piece of wood roughly the size of a sheet of writing paper.