Boudin to Dufy
Subtitle: Impressionist and Other Masters from the Musees Des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre
Contributors: Timothy Wilcox (Editor); Margot Heller (Editor); Musee Des Beaux-Arts Du Havre (Corporate Author)
Publisher: Scolar Press; Ashgate Pub.; Hove Museum and Art Gallery; Southampton City Art Gallery; Scolar Pr
Published: May 1995
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 80
ISBN-13: 9781859283219
Subjects: Bibliographies, catalogues, discographies; Drawing & drawings; Impressionism; Painting & paintings; Post-Impressionism; Impressionism (Art); Exhibition Catalogs; Art & Art Instruction; History - General; Art; General; Exhibitions; 19th century; Painting, French; 20th century; France
Description: The channel port of Le Havre played a key role in the development of Impressionist painting. It was there that Monet painted Impression, sunrise, the work that gave the movement its name. Many other artists of the period were associated with the town, from Monet's teacher Boudin to the colourful and exuberant favourite of a younger generation, Raoul Dufy.

The beauty of the light on the coast attracted landscape artists throughout the nineteenth century. This was not a simple history, parts of the coastline were rapidly changing with the growth of the port at Le Havre and the emergence of Trouville as the leading seaside resort for the whole of France.

It was on this coast that painters first began to paint the explicitly modern life of the tourist and holidaymaker on the beaches, bringing Parisian invaders face to face with the traditional imagery of the forces of the elements. For Boudin, such paintings were an explicit counter to traditional landscapes peopled by the stock imagery of rural peasants.

. The painters who worked in and around Le Havre made choices of subject matter and style that were a vivid expression of the contemporary debate on the art of landscape painting. What were the appropriate subjects for the landscapist? And how should they be treated?