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EUGÈNE BOUDIN , HONFLEUR, 1824 – DEAUVILLE, 1898 Les Bords de la Touques à Trouville pendant les grandes marées Oil on canvas 50,2 x 74 cm It is the wispy aspect that dominates here. The sky, with its dappled clouds, carries them in a lumpy mess. Linked to each other randomly, they form a disparate and sparse mass where each one nevertheless retains its own density. Below, the banks of the Touques offer a similar dappled appearance, where the mass of banks disintegrates in the floodwaters. Near its mouth, the river is, in fact, invaded by the exceptional rise of the tide, which overflows its banks in a disorderly fashion. Although the painter chooses to show the river from an angle, to accentuate the perspective, he blurs the linear line of the river by the erratic overflow of its bed. Thus, the tumult of the skies is matched by that of the ground, both animated by the same violence of the elements, due to the great tides. Separating these two masses, the round silhouettes of the trees delimit a horizon where some house looms. Lost in this immensity, man is relegated to a small blue touch evolving on a path on the right. The homogeneity of the landscape is indebted to this buffered touch that builds up each element - clouds, trees and banks - and contrasts with the plain background of the sky or the smooth surface of the river. When Boudin's brush favours a mottled aspect, it is to suggest a climatic variation, an unstable state of the landscape ... In 1859, he exhibited his first painting at the Salon where he was noticed by Baudelaire. He met Courbet, Jongkind and then Monet, whom he introduced to plein-air painting. As he gained notoriety, he devoted himself to more mundane subjects, accompanying the birth of the first seaside resorts, Deauville, Trouville but also Juan-les-Pins. In 1874, he took part in the first Impressionist exhibition at Nadar's. Beyond the scenes of daily life, sketched with vivacity and even picturesqueness, his landscapes are organized with precision according to the laws of perspective and according to a framing influenced by the nascent photography. The characters, secondary or even anecdotal, are set in a perspectival space where the eye is invited to travel over vast expanses. But it is above all his treatment of light that will earn him the recognition of his peers, particularly for his skies. Corot, his elder, gave him the laudatory title of 'king of the skies', while Baudelaire awarded him the title of 'painter of meteorological beauties'. Provenance: J. Eastman Chase (1840-1923), art dealer, Boston; William Whitman, Boston (then by descent within the family to the present owner). Work reproduced in Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898, Robert & Manuel Schmit, Deuxième supplément, vol. II, Paris, 1993, no. 4000 (illustrated p.61). Signatur: Signed and dated lower right 'E. Boudin 89'