Eugène Boudin, maître de l'instantanéité • The 50th Year of the Sompo Museum of Art, Tokyo: Art Museum Exhibition
“We are pleased and proud to lend these pastels and this oil painting, which reflect Boudin’s intense sensitivity to light and atmosphere. Their presence enriches the exhibition’s narrative and offers Japanese audiences an opportunity to appreciate the artist’s decisive influence on the emergence of Impressionism.”
Florence Chibret-Plaussu
Director of Galerie de la Présidence
Alongside major Japanese and French museums, Galerie de la Présidence is pleased to announce the loan of three works by Eugène Boudin to the major retrospective organized in Japan — the first devoted to the artist in nearly thirty years. These pieces will join a group of around one hundred works brought together at the Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo, offering audiences an opportunity to rediscover the richness and modernity of Boudin’s vision of landscape and light.
About the works loaned by Galerie de la Presidence
They consist of two pastels titled Study of Sky and an oil on panel, Sailboats at the Dock (1885–1890). These pieces illustrate Boudin’s mastery in capturing maritime atmospheres and shifting skies, as well as his fondness for working outdoors — a practice that profoundly influenced the Impressionist generation.
About the exhibition
A forerunner of Impressionism, Eugène Boudin captured, with a fresh palette and a lively touch, the fleeting moments of nature — skies, clouds, seascapes, and Norman landscapes. His approach deeply inspired the young Claude Monet and contributed to the emergence of Impressionism.
The Japanese exhibition (which will subsequently travel across the country) offers a renewed reading of Eugène Boudin’s work, highlighting not only his seascapes but also his figures, his architectural subjects, and the diversity of motifs he depicted. In doing so, it reveals the full extent of his contribution to the development of the modern French landscape.
