Tea at Trianon: On Eugène Boudin's 'Trouville, Scène de Plage'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

On Eugène Boudin's 'Trouville, Scène de Plage'

From ArtNet:

When I went to her and said, “Grandma, I wanna help,” she gifted me that Boudin painting as a memento of our time following the Impressionists in France together. But also, maybe it was a vote of confidence in what I would hopefully end up doing with YoungArts and other philanthropic work in the arts that I’ve done.

The Boudin is the only piece that is in my bedroom, and has been that way actually for three apartments now. Ninety-five percent of the work that I own, I know the artists, I’ve been in their studio, I’ve worked with them in some capacity, whether an artist from Greater New York at MoMA PS1, or a YoungArts winner or mentor. And then there is this random Eugene Boudin!

That trip with my grandmother was transformative, and definitely changed everything. As for the narrative of the painting, I grew up in Miami. So, we always had family time at the beach. I now have a five-year-old girl and an almost two-year-old girl. We have our beach days and there’s something about those family experiences. But to me, the painting is symbolic. The Boudin has become a part of my environment. It’s one of those things where if I was in a situation where I needed cash, I would sooner sell the apartment than that painting. It’s so symbolic and means so much. It’s the start of my whole adult and professional life.

I am in the process of moving back to Miami after 18 years in New York, so that my daughters can have more time with my grandmother. This will be the first thing that’s installed. (Read more.)

From Christie's:

Drawn to the beaches of Trouville, Boudin prolifically painted the wealthy bourgeoisie who flocked to the coast for their summer sojourn. After the railroad station of Trouville was erected in 1863, it transformed into a veritable transplant of Parisian boulevard culture, littered with fashionable women and their parasols as soon as the casinos opened on the first of July. Boudin’s vibrant paintings captured this modern escape from the city, with merry gatherings socializing and taking in sun.
Boudin, the owner of a painting and frame shop in Le Havre, first painted this seaside resort town in 1862. Heeding poet Charles Baudelaire’s exhortation to paint modern life, Boudin was attracted to the throng of vacationers. His so-called “crinoline” paintings, named for ladies’ hoopskirts, accounted for the majority of the paintings Boudin showed at the Salon between 1864 and 1869, winning him widespread acclaim.
Though the 1860s crinoline paintings were executed in the studio on large or medium canvas formats for formal exhibition venues, Boudin was also growing accustomed to painting en plen air on small panels, a support that lent itself to the outdoors. During the 1870s, these accounted for most of his Boudin beach paintings and would later dominate his paintings of this genre. These iconic portrayals came to define his oeuvre, as he admitted in a letter to his brother in November 1865: “I shall do other things, but I will always be the painter of beaches” (quoted in G. Jean-Aubry, Eugène Boudin, d'après des documents inédits, Paris, 1922, p. 62). (Read more.)