PLEIN AIR HERITAGE
The son of a sailor, Eugène Louis Boudin (French, 1824–1898) grew up near the sea in Normandy. While he enjoyed only a brief stint as a cabin boy at age 11, ships and harbors remained a muse for much of his painting career. Largely self-taught, the artist found the best way to capture the subtleties of such scenes was to paint outdoors. He was so enthusiastic about the practice, in fact, that he often documented the weather and time on the back of his canvases. Here, he concentrated on the working docks of Bordeaux. The low horizon line relegates much of the canvas to sky, with the soaring vertical and diagonal forms of the masts providing a complement to the horizontal thrust. To create a fresh, airy quality, the artist covered…
