Trouville at Low Tide

Boudin first made his name at Trouville in the 1860s, painting the crinolined holidaymakers who came to this new Normandy resort to be seen on the sand. Some 30 years later, in his late sixties, he was still returning, though this small panel turns away from the crowds. It catches the beach at low tide, the water pulled far out and the boats left sitting on wet sand under a wide, changing sky. That sky is really the subject. Corot had called him the king of skies, and Boudin filled notebooks with the weather of a particular hour. He worked small and fast, often outdoors, on panels he could hold in one hand, which is why something like this keeps the freshness of a single afternoon. He died in 1898, a few years after painting it, on the coast where he had started.