The Beach at Deauville (1864): Art, History and Details

The Beach at Deauville (1864) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Eugène Boudin (French, 1824–1898).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

During the 1860s, Boudin executed many paintings and watercolors representing well-to-do tourists and vacationers enjoying seaside resorts in Normandy, principally Trouville and Deauville. In this scene, the informally posed figures suggest a sense of relaxation and intimacy. The overturned chair in the foreground underscores the impression of a casually observed moment, as though a sea breeze or a quick departure by its former occupant has upended it. The majority of Boudin's small oil paintings of beach scenes of the 1860s were executed on wood panel. After laying down a thin white ground, Boudin seems to have begun painting directly, not drawing or laying in guidelines for the forms. The result is a freshness and airiness appropriate to a windy day at the beach.

Object facts

• Title: The Beach at Deauville
• Date: 1864
• Creator attribution: Eugène Boudin (French, 1824–1898)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood panel
• Dimensions: Framed: 45.7 x 36.8 x 3.5 cm (18 x 14 1/2 x 1 3/8 in.); Unframed: 34.7 x 26 cm (13 11/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1946.71

A detail from the museum

Boudin evokes the feeling of wind by painting the fluttering blue dress, the beach walker leaning to the left, the whitecaps on the water, and the angle of the sails on the boat in the distance.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Homer H. Johnson

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jean-Aubry, G., Robert Schmit, and Caroline Tisdall. Eugène Boudin. Greenwich, Conn: New York Graphic Society, 1968.
• Schmit, Robert, and Eugène Boudin. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris, FR: Schmit, 1973.
• Schmit, Robert. Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898. Paris, FR: R. Schmit, 1984.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.