The Dunes at Tourgeville

Through his young friend, Monet, Boudin’s work became a most significant factor in the development of Impressionism. His own thinking was formulated by the example of the Barbizon School painters and particularly Corot. Yet, rather than painting the subdued tones of the forest as they did, he chose to focus on the changing effects of the seaside in the area of Honfleur and Le Havre, where he grew up. His early studies, painted out of doors and concentrating more upon light and colour than upon the subject, influenced the new generation of painters. Boudin enjoyed enormous popularity during the closing years of the nineteenth century in both France and North America. His appeal in Montreal, moreover, should be seen as a corollary of the prevailing taste for Hague School landscapes. This painting is the first in a series of similar views of Tourgeville, near Deauville, that the artist painted during the 1880s and 1890s.