Crinolines sur la plage

On a windswept stretch of French coast, Eugène Boudin gathers a crowd of stylish beachgoers for an ordinary seaside afternoon. Painted in 1865, "Crinolines sur la plage" takes its name from the wide hooped skirts that were the height of fashion at the time. The women sit clustered together in their voluminous dresses, some holding parasols, while a man in a long pale coat stands nearby and a small spotted dog wanders across the sand. Boats bob on the water in the distance, and the mood is relaxed, almost lazy, as if we have simply stumbled upon a group of friends passing the time.

Boudin adored resorts like Trouville and Deauville, where wealthy Parisians came to escape the city in the 1860s, and he returned to these beach scenes again and again. His real love, though, was the sky, which fills more than half the canvas here in loose sweeps of grey and blue. Working outdoors to catch the shifting light, he developed an approach that would soon feed into Impressionism. He even took a young Claude Monet under his wing and pushed him to paint in the open air. The painter Camille Corot dubbed him the "king of skies," and this hazy, cloud-heavy view makes the nickname feel well earned.