Eugène Boudin
(Honfleur 1824 – Deauville 1898)
Cour et Écurie d’un Loueur (c. 1885-90)
Signed lower left
Oil on canvas, 23.9 x 32 cm
Provenance:
– Dormeuil, Paris (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 10, 1936, no. 75)
– Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired at the above sale and until 1940)
– Galerie Bernier, Paris
– Fritz & Peter Nathan, Zurich
– E.J. van Wisselingh & Co., Amsterdam
– Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
– Auction Christie’s, New York, November 15, 1983, lot 1
– Senator Frank R. Lautenberg & Mrs. Lois Lautenberg, New Jersey (acquired in 1984)
– Private collection
– Auction Sotheby’s, New York, 78 May 2003, lot 569 (unsold)
– Galerie Eufrazie, Valkenburg (incl. invoice)
– Private collection, the Netherlands
Exhibited:
National Gallery of Art, Washington, French Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, 1966, no. 24
Literature:
R. Schmit, Eugène Boudin, vol. II, Paris, 1973, no. 2120, p. 310 (ill.)
Note:
Eugène Louis Boudin was, largely self-taught, one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Being an expert in the rendering of all that goes over land, upon the sea and along its shores, his works garnered the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire; and Corot called him the “King of the skies”. Dutch seventeenth century masters profoundly inspired Boudin. The Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, who had already made his mark in French artistic circles, encouraged Boudin to paint outdoors (en plein air).
In 1835 Boudin’s family moved to Le Havre, where his father opened a store for stationery and picture frames. Here the young Eugène worked, later opening his own small shop. In his shop Boudin exhibited the paintings of Constant Troyon lot 169 and Jean-François Millet, who, along with Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Thomas Couture, encouraged young Boudin to follow an artistic career.