Washerwomen at the Touques

Eugène Boudin spent his life on the Normandy coast, and Corot once called him the king of skies. By 1891 he was in his late 60s and still working the same country he always had — here the low banks of the Touques, the river that runs down past Trouville and Deauville to the sea. Washerwomen kneeling at the water's edge were a subject he came back to for decades, ordinary work along the tideline under a wide, changing sky. It was Boudin who, years before, had taken a teenage Claude Monet outdoors to paint from life on this same coast. The weather does most of the talking here: the water, the damp air, and the clouds he watched more closely than almost anyone.