The beach

The railway reached Trouville on the Normandy coast in 1863, and within a season the sand was covered with Parisians who would never have made the trip by road. Boudin had grown up along that coast, at Honfleur and Le Havre, and he turned away from the fishing boats and began painting the visitors. His beach panels of these years are rows of seated women in wide crinolines and men in dark coats, everyone facing the water as if watching a stage. He had no illusions about the subject. In a letter of 1863 he remarked how readily his little ladies on the beach sold, and that people kept telling him there was a vein of gold in them. From 1864 he spent every summer on that coast. This panel is a small one, about 30 centimetres high, and on studies like it he would note the date, the hour and the direction of the wind.