Beach Scene at Trouville 

Curator: Looking at this, I'm struck by the palpable boredom. That heavy, overcast sky pressing down… everyone seated, formally dressed, as if waiting for something terribly important that will never arrive. It's funny, really, the human comedy on a cloudy day. Editor: Indeed! Here we have Eugène Boudin's "Beach Scene at Trouville", an example of his plein-air work, and what a powerful example it is. You immediately sense the industrial influences starting to change this coastline. We witness the burgeoning leisure class presented with an almost journalistic approach. Curator: Journalistic! That’s it exactly. He’s reporting, not composing some grand, romantic landscape. Though there's a wistfulness in the brushwork. It is if he already anticipates that their leisure and fashions are going to fade like colors left too long in the sun. What materials were used in its creation? Editor: He rendered it alla prima using quick strokes with oil paint directly onto the canvas while experiencing the weather. It's evident by the textures, the speed in execution. Boudin was a master of capturing the transient effects of light and atmosphere. Think about the rise of industrial paint production and readymade canvases! Suddenly the painter leaves the studio. Curator: And look at those figures. Regimented, a little doll-like. Each one individualized by brushstroke. It is as if they were individually conceived and added later to the landscape that always was... But who, exactly, are these people and why were they suddenly on view? Editor: He is painting what Baudelaire named 'the painting of modern life'! That life included an burgeoning bourgeois middle class who benefited directly from a booming industrialized economy! Consumption was their labor. Leisure its engine. Curator: Leisure as an engine... Now there's a chilling thought for a beach day! Makes the picture feel far more vital. Boudin captured a turning point here. Before things sped up irrevocably. Editor: And perhaps revealed the underpinnings in ways other artists missed, in the grain of the sand and those fleeting clouds of modernity. Thank you, your poetic and material interpretations beautifully complement each other.