Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) was a French painter of beaches, harbors, and open skies whose patient study of the Norman coast was instrumental in forming the young Claude Monet and in laying the technical groundwork for Impressionism. Working consistently outdoors from the 1850s onward, he developed a way of rendering transient atmospheric conditions — scudding clouds, shifting beach light, the busy social world of the fashionable seaside resort at Trouville — with a lightness of touch and an immediacy of observation that Corot recognized early, calling Boudin "the king of skies." He participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, exhibited regularly with the group throughout the decade, and continued painting with undiminished energy and freshness into his seventies. His work has a particular quality of outdoor freshness and physical pleasure that translates effortlessly onto a wall.