Beach Scene at Low Tide

In 1867 an English landowner, John Bowes, and his French wife Joséphine, a former Paris actress, were living in Paris and buying paintings in large numbers for a museum they meant to build at Barnard Castle, near his family estate in County Durham. Work on the building began two years later. This small beach scene, painted by Boudin that same year, is among the pictures the couple left to it.

The tide is out. A pool of seawater lies on the flat sand and holds the grey of the sky, and a crowd of visitors stands about in wide skirts and dark coats, one woman in bright blue at the centre under a blue parasol. A small brown dog sits apart at the front, and a pier runs out on the far left. More than half the canvas is given over to cloud.