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Description: | Signed: yes Description: Eugène Louis Boudin's career runs parallel with that of the Barbizon group, but as a more innovative painter he remained isolated from them. He was an important precursor of Impressionism and exerted a significant influence on the group, particularly on Claude Monet (1840-1926) whom he met in 1856. Boudin contributed to the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 held in Paris. Boudin spent the larger part of his career working around the estuary of the Sein at Honfleur and in his native Le Havre, where he produced numerous plein-air sketches concerned with capturing the effects of nature. The Southampton painting of a night-scene is a rare occurrence in Boudin's work. In this finely composed painting, which shows the village of Le Faou dropping down to the water's edge from the right and an open expanse of still water stretching the breadth of the canvas, Boudin has caught all the quiet elegance of the moonlit scene. Using an almost monochrome palette to reveal the rich range of tones produced by the refracted light of the full moon, which hangs in the clouds at the centre of the picture, Boudin's atmospheric description of the scene masterfully captures each detail as it is washed in silver light. The date of Moonlit Village Scene is not known with certainty. However, it may constructively be compared with Monet's A Seascape, Shipping by Moonlight (1864; National Gallery of Scotland), depicting the harbour at Honfleur. Although a much bolder work than Boudin's, in it the young Monet, who also infrequently painted night scenes, has grasped the essence of Boudin's method of distributing tone to create the effect of shimmering light surfaces. | Subjects: | France) marine; place (Le Faou Brittany | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Boudin, Eugène Louis (French painter, 1824-1898) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8402... | Go to resource |
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