RETURN OF THE FISHING SMACKS · EUGENE BOUDIN
The hostesses are of a type apart, and no other country but France produces them in such numbers. “Mères des artistes,” they are full of pride with their anecdotes of celebrated lodgers. Peasants of the best class, admired and respected by all who come into contact with them, they are remembered with affection. The peaceful holidays spent in these lovely villages represent much of the brighter side of the art-student’s career, and memories mix with regrets as one recalls a youth spent in that beloved country of art—la belle France.
Boudin’s academy of painting at the inn was no great success, and he changed his habitat to Trouville, twenty miles down the coast, at the invitation of Isabey and the Duc de Morny. They suggested that he should paint “scènes de plage” of that gay and fashionable watering-place, the bathers, the frequenters of the Casino and the racecourse, the regattas, the “landscapes of the sea” as Courbet called them. “It is prodigious, my dear fellow; truly you are one of the seraphim, for you alone understand the heavens,” cried Courbet one day in excitement as he watched Boudin at work. Boudin was at last becoming famous. Alexandre Dumas addressed him as, “You who are master of the skies, ‘par excellence,’” and above all came the testimony of Corot, who described him as “le roi des ciels.”
Unfortunately, the public did not buy Boudin’s pictures, and he remained in poverty. In 1864 he married, his wife receiving a “dot” of 2000 francs, and a home was made up four flights of rickety stairs in a mean street in Honfleur, the rental of the garret being thirty-five shillings per annum. Amongst their visitors the saddest was Jongkind, the man of failure, a reproach to the blindness of his generation, and a warning to those who seek fortune by the brush. It was only by the combination of courage, energy, and robust health that Boudin was able to fight his way through actual periods of starvation in order to live to see his work justified by public appreciation.
Four years later the little household was moved to Havre. Boudin was reduced to such absolute poverty that he was not able to provide himself with sufficient decent clothing to visit a rich tradesman of the town, who had commissioned some decorative panels. The commission was lost, and the fight for bread was keener than before. During the winter furniture was converted into firewood, and the artist worked as an ordinary labourer. Boudin hated Paris, but at the urgent solicitation of artists, who promised him work, he left Havre for the metropolis. Ill luck still dogged his steps. No sooner had he settled with his wife in the new quarters than the war broke out with all the unendurable misfortunes of “l’année terrible” in its train.
Hopes of commissions were at an end, the art colony being scattered far and wide. Boudin fled first to Deauville, then to Brussels. Crowded with French refugees, the struggle for life entered its bitterest stage. For the second time Boudin became a day-labourer. At last, by a most trifling chance, his wretched position was altered for the better. By hazard Madame Boudin met a picture-dealer whilst marketing, and his appreciation and encouragement enabled the artist to return to his easel. The artist’s progress was, however, extremely slow. Nine years later he held an auction sale of his pictures, at which four paintings realised £21. A friend who had joined in the sale was more unfortunate, for he sold nothing. “You see,” he wrote to Boudin, “that nothing succeeds with me. I don’t know how it will all finish. What upsets me most in the midst of all this worry is the fear that I should lose all love for painting.” This phrase must have represented Boudin’s thoughts during the long years of disheartening struggle.
In 1881, after twenty-three years of almost annual exhibition in the Paris Salons, Boudin obtained a medal in the third class. Nowadays this award is usually made to the young man who exhibits for the first time. Three years later Boudin received a medal of the second class, which exempted his work from judgment by the jury, and places its recipient “hors concours.” He commenced, at the age of fifty, to sell his pictures more regularly, but at prices extremely low and out of proportion to their present value. At the Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in 1888, one hundred canvases by Boudin fetched the grand total of £280. It is difficult to estimate what sum such a lot would reach at the present day.
The tide had changed, for the Government bought a large painting, Une Corvette Russe dans le Bassin de l’Eure au Havre for the Luxembourg. In 1889, public honour was marred by the most mournful blow. To his inconsolable grief his wife died, after twenty-five years of the happiest companionship. Amongst the letters of sympathy were many acknowledgments of the artist’s genius, notably from Claude Monet, “in recognition of the advice which has made me what I am”—a striking and flattering phrase from the head of the Impressionist group. In this same year Boudin was awarded the gold medal at the Salon. In 1896 the Government purchased his Rade de Villefranche for the Luxembourg, and the old artist received from the hands of Puvis de Chavannes, at the recommendation of the Minister Léon Bourgeois, the ribbon and cross of the Legion of Honour.
