Vacationers on the Beach at Trouville

Eugène-Louis Boudin

1864, possibly reworked in 1869

Oil on canvas

Minneapolis Institute of Art

This is one of Eugène Boudin's many paintings of the Normandy coast in northern France. Around 1862 Boudin began working at Trouville, a summer resort served by the new train lines from Paris. There, well-to-do city dwellers enjoyed a new type of vacation: the beach holiday. Some people actually swam (wearing the daring new bathing costumes), but many gathered just to enjoy the sea air and socialize. Boudin's beach scenes, a new subject for painting, sold rapidly to Paris collectors. Most were smaller than this - just the size for Parisian parlors. This was the first painting purchased by the Minneapolis Institute of Art after it op