Le Havre played a key role in the personal and artistic life of Eugène Boudin (1826-1898). The site of his first activity, a place of fruitful encounters and a constant source of inspiration, Le Havre was one of the chosen lands of the man known as the "master of skies".

It was in Le Havre that Eugène Boudin (1824-1898), the son of a sailor born in Honfleur, opened a stationery shop at the age of just twenty, using the window to display paintings by visiting painters, who in turn advised and encouraged him to abandon his trade for art.
It was once again in Le Havre, and thanks to the landscapes he sent there in 1850, that Boudin came to the attention of the town and was granted a pension. Although he was a regular visitor to Paris, the capital of the arts, he remained faithful to Le Havre, Honfleur and the Saint-Siméon farm, where he rubbed shoulders with painters he had met in the past and enjoyed the great outdoors.
In 1858, it was also unsurprisingly in Le Havre that the young Monet and Boudin had their momentous encounter, which led the latter to the motif and alerted him to the transient nature of all things.
The following summer, Boudin befriended Courbet and the two men met Baudelaire, who was enthusiastic about his skies around Le Havre.

Thanks to the successful sale of his works in 1868, Boudin finally had the means to travel. He criss-crossed Western France, visited Venice and renewed his inspiration. He returned tirelessly to Normandy, however, for his port views, with a clear predilection for Le Havre, not forgetting his beach scenes with their blooming crinolines and peaceful flocks. Far from being repetitions, these paintings - at once all similar and all different - are variations on a theme that shed light on his participation in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.

Eugène Boudin left an abundant body of artworks, with views of Le Havre occupying pride of place, as does our painting, dated 1884. Lent by Jules Choquet to the Eugène Boudin retrospective in 1899, it is typical of the artist's work, with its spontaneous touch that in no way sacrifices the acuity of observation, and its aspiration to capture the ephemeral - water, air and humanity in motion - in the tradition of the Impressionists at the height of their art.


Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) Le Havre. Le Bassin du Commerce, 1884
Oil on panel
Signed, dated '[18]84' and located 'Le Havre' bottom left 32,5 x 41 cm

Provenance
• Collection Jules-Charles Choquet, Paris
• Collection particulière, France (par descendance)

Exhibition
Exposition des oeuvres d'Eugène Boudin, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 9-30 janvier 1899, n°351

Bibliography
• Exposition des oeuvres d'Eugène Boudin du 9 au 30 janvier 1899, Supplément au catalogue, s. e. [École des Beaux-Arts], n. d. [1899], décrit sous le nº351, n. p.
• Robert Schmit, Eugène Boudin, 1824-1898, Tome II, Paris : Galerie Schmit, 1973, décrit et reproduit sous le n°1883, p. 224

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