The French painter Eugène Boudin is considered the bridge between the landscape painting of the generation of Camille Corot (1796-1875) and the Impressionists like Monet (1840-1926), Renoir (1841-1919) and Alfred Sisley (1839-99). ). Working in Le Havre, he specialized in outdoor painting - a practice he introduced the young Monet to, painting beaches and seascapes. His subjects were the smartly dressed society crowd that flocked to the Normandy coast; the loose brushwork and the quality of light in his paintings, particularly in his luminous skies, are clear symptoms of early Impressionism.
One of the first of his generation to paint outdoors, Boudin declared that three brushstrokes done outdoors were worth more than days of work in the studio. Many of his paintings contain grains of sand from the beaches where he painted.