Beach Scene

Look at the two steamboats on the horizon. Their smoke blows in opposite directions, a slip the National Gallery points out, and a clue that this beach was put together indoors. Degas went to the Channel coast in 1869, possibly with his friend and rival Manet, whose Beach at Boulogne has the same three bands of sand, green sea and grey sky. Degas later said he finished this picture in the studio, remarking that the air you breathe in a painting is not the air you breathe outdoors. He even painted out a bathing hut he had planned. What he kept is a maid combing a girl's hair after her swim, the bathing suit spread on the sand to dry. The picture was shown at the third Impressionist exhibition in Paris in April 1877, lent by his friend Henri Rouart.