Beach Scene at Trouville

In 1863 the railway reached Trouville on the Normandy coast, and within a season the beach filled with Parisians who had stepped off the train in their city clothes. Eugène Boudin, born just along the coast at Honfleur, was there to paint them. That same year he wrote, half amused, about the popularity of his little ladies on the beach, and this is one of them: a crowd in crinolines and top hats sitting out on the open sand under a wide grey sky. Look to the right and you can pick out two tall poles with striped banners, one of them the blue, white and red of France, snapping in the sea wind. Boudin worked these scenes on small wooden panels he could carry outdoors. The young Claude Monet watched him do it, and later said it was Boudin who taught him to paint in the open air.