Vacanciers sur la plage de Trouville

The railway reached the Normandy coast in the early 1860s and turned the fishing town of Trouville into a weekend resort for Parisians. Boudin was working there from about 1862, setting up on the sand and painting the visitors themselves, in crinolines and top hats, sitting out in rented chairs in the wind. The beach holiday was that new. His crowd scenes sold quickly in Paris, and most of them were small, sized for a city apartment. This one runs just over a metre across, which is large for him, and he seems to have gone back into it some years later, around 1869. When the Minneapolis Institute of Art opened its doors in 1915, this was the first painting it bought.