Beach of Trouville

This is one of the few pictures Boudin made for the Paris Salon. Before 1870 he sent only 15, and this one hung in 1867, the year Paris also staged its Exposition Universelle. Trouville, on the Normandy coast, was then the most fashionable resort for Parisians escaping the summer heat. In his review of the 1859 Salon the poet Charles Baudelaire had praised Boudin's quick studies of skies, and in the same essay he regretted that painters were not taking on crowds and buildings together, what he called the urban landscape. Whether or not Boudin took the hint, from 1860 he began lining up holidaymakers in a long band across the sand under a very high sky, and the Tokyo museum counts this canvas among the fullest results. Look for the small touches of red among the grey and blue dresses. The painting later belonged to Henry Ford II, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo bought it in 1985.