Existing comment:
Edouard Manet
On the Beach, Boulogne-sur-Mer, ca 1868-69
This is Manet's only painting of the beach in Boulogne-sur-Mer, located on the northern coast of France. Working in his studio from eighteen pencil sketches of groups of people, Manet placed the figures onto the flattened background with little regard for scale or perspective. He shows the fashionable tourists with a bathing machine -- pictured in the left middle ground -- that carried swimmers across the wide beach and into the water. Manet is one of the first artists to depict the "travel dress" for women, notable for a shortened hem that exposed the ankles. The painting can be related to beachscapes by Eugene Boudin and to Berthe Morisot's On the Beach in 1873, also in this collection, and likely influenced by this painting. |