Beach Scene

A crowd of well dressed vacationers gathers on a breezy Normandy beach in this 1870 painting by Eugène Boudin. Women in long dresses cluster near their striped bathing huts, one holding a blue parasol against the light, while a boy in a red shirt stands near the shoreline with a small dog beside him. The sea fades into a pale gray horizon, but the real star is the sky, which fills more than half the canvas with soft, drifting clouds.

Boudin spent much of his life along the coast of Normandy, and these relaxed beach outings were his favorite thing to paint. He worked outdoors, straight from what he saw in front of him, which was fairly rare in his day. That habit and his loose, airy brushwork helped set the stage for the Impressionists who came after him. A young Claude Monet even studied under Boudin, who nudged him to try painting outside as well. People nicknamed Boudin the "king of the skies," and one glance at those clouds explains why the title fit so well.