Footnotes

• Provenance:
  
  Varcin-Boulanger, Paris, Private collection.
  Exhibited:
  
  Hector Brame, Paris, Exposition Eugène Boudin, 23 Nov - 15 Dec 1956, no.5 in the catalogue.
  
  Arthur Tooth & Sons, London.
  
  
  Literature:
  Robert Schmidt, Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) - Catalogue raisonne, Paris 1973, Vol.I, no.972, p.345, illus. b & w
  Bordeaux, Bateaux, sur la Garonne presents Eugene Boudin in the full maturity of his career as a marine painter. At the age of fifty, Boudin's reputation and commerical success had reached unprecedented heights. From his humble beginnings as a sailor's son opening a stationary shop in Le Havre at the age of 20, to his move to the capital in 1847 and years of convivial struggle with the friendships of Courbet, Jongkind and Monet, Boudin had gained an established reputation by exhibiting regularly at the offical Salon. However, his longing for open spaces and coastal air took him back frequently to the coast. Whether Honfleur, his town of birth, Le Havre, Trouville or Bordeaux, Boudin created great painted variations of the ports and marinas he liked best. The present painting thus presents an original variation on the theme of the port; with Boudin choosing to depict the quiet crossing of the shipping vessels over the Garonne river. The great detail given to the ships' structural framework, as they pass against a setting sky, shows how carefully the artist applied himself to describing his view. This painting was executed in 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, to which Boudin had been invited to participate.