The Inlet at Berck (Pas-de-Calais)

In the years of the Barbizon painters’ triumph at the Paris Salon, Boudin began painting his intimately-observed views of the Normandy coastline. Working outdoors in all weather, he paid particular attention to scudding clouds and changing seas. His early paintings often depict the fashionable Parisian tourists who flocked to northern shores in the 1850s, but in this view of the beach at Berck, a fishing and resort town, he instead explored the strand itself, bordered by simple houses, scattered with fence posts and tufts of sea grass.