From the sunny beaches to the windy shores, these famous artworks capture the colors, light, and atmosphere of playful, tranquil days at the coast …

1. painted in 1865: a panoramic format that is astonishing in its originality and its modernity, over one and a half meters, a real, almost cinematographic tracking
shot along the length of the Etretat beach …

2. The Beach and the Great European Painters

3. From the sunny beaches to the windy shores, these famous artworks capture the colors, light, and atmosphere
of playful, tranquil days at the coast …

4. a masterpiece
a ambitious composition
a snapshot of social life under the Second Empire
the delightful atmosphere of a Normandy summer ...
a throng of figures enjoying themselves: bathers,
fashionable women in crinolines, well-dressed men
and peddlers,
the bathing huts,
the splendid still life of heaped clothes and belongings,
the lobster pots,
the planks of wood laid on the ground, which allowed
bathers and walkers to cross over the sand
Eugène Le Poittevin
Les Bains de Mer, Plage d’Etretat
Bathing in Etretat
1864
Private collection

6. Purchased by Napoleon III, for his personal collection and considered lost since the fall of the Emperor in 1870.
The rediscovered "lost" painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in Paris, 3 December 2020, for €226,800, a record
for a work by Le Poittevin.

8. the skinny, lanky young man among the bathers, anonymous adolescent just after he has emerged from the sea,
in a black bathing costume, wearing a cap, stooping and no doubt shivering from the cold waters of the Channel,
is Guy de Maupassant …

12. the young man about to dive has been identified
as Guy de Maupassant
the beautiful lady in her crinoline dress, is Eugenie
Doche, Belgian actress famous for having played
the role of Marguerite Gautier in the play
La dame aux Camélias
Eugène Le Poittevin brought together in Étretat his
artist friends and helped to turn this coastal village
into a focal point for open-air painting during the
third quarter of the 19th century.
Eugène Le Poittevin
Bains de mer d'Étretat
Bathing at Etretat
1866
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Troyes

16. contemporary vacationers at the beaches of Normandy …
Boudin made excursions along the coast to sketch
the appearance of the sky and sea in open air
Eugène Boudin
La plage à Villerville
The Beach at Villerville
1864
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

20. the bourgeoisie, their postures and fashions,
including the huge crinolines that in high winds occasionally sent
women over cliffs …
Like the plume of smoke issuing from a steamer,
the anonymity of the figures imparts a sense of modern life ...
Eugène Boudin
Scène de plage à Trouville
Beach Scene, Trouville
1863
National Gallery of Art, Washington

24. elegant gentlemen and ladies who come to the beach
in long dresses prefer to converse, stroll or
contemplate the sea
only children and a little dog have fun ...
Eugène Boudin
La plage de Trouville
The Beach at Trouville
1865
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

29. Suzanne, Manet's wife with her book,
Eugène, the painter's brother is gazing out to sea,
lying in the same position as ten years earlier in
Lunch on the Grass
absorbed in their own worlds ...
Édouard Manet
Sur la plage
On the Beach
1873
Musée d’Orsay, Paris

33. Camille on the Beach
a blustery day in 1870 Normandy ...
you can almost sense the wind, crashing waves
and salty air
Claude Monet
Camille sur la plage de Trouville
Camille on the Beach at Trouville
1870
Yale University Art Gallery, Yale

36. Camille
and
an expanse of beach where elegant vacationers
stroll
Claude Monet
Sur la plage à Trouville
On the beach at Trouville
1870
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

39. the play of light and shade …
a typical summer scene on the Normandy coast
grains of sand embedded in the paint reveal that
the canvas was painted on the spot
Claude Monet
Sur la plage à Trouville
On the beach at Trouville
1870
National Gallery, London

42. a beach of Northern France …
Degas was a great admirer of Japanese prints, and some
historians believe the art form influenced this artwork:
a maid combs the hair of a young girl—a narrative
that is featured in Japanese prints.
Edgar Degas
Bains de mer
Beach scene
1877
National Gallery, London

46. among the rocks on the beach ...
this picture wasn’t painted en plein air,
but back in Renoir’s Paris studio,
from studies he had made during his stay
on the small island of Guernsey in 1883
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Enfants au bord de la mer à Guernesey
Children on the Seashore, Guernsey
1883
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia and Merion

49. a day of Tahiti underneath the warm Sun
...
two women sitting in the sand
Paul Gauguin
Femmes de Tahiti, ou Sur la plage
Tahitian Women, on The Beach
1891
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

53. the nuances of colour of the seashore: white, pink, mauve
and blue …
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Time for a Bathe, Valencia
L'Heure du bain, Valence
1909
Museo Sorolla, Madrid

57. strolling along the seashore ...
wife and eldest daughter in an elegant pose, attitude
and dress
the water and the sandy seashore, depicted in long blue,
purple and turquoise brushstrokes
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Walk on the Beach
Promenade au bord de la mer
1909
Sorolla Museum, Madrid

61. a monument to the new freedoms that swept
the world after the first world war ...
the bright blue shades of the sea and the sky,
the flowing hair of the women, their tight,
elastic, surprisingly material bodies —
all this gives a feeling of the maximum
possible life fullness that a person can
experience
... this is how you must live, this is how you
must feel, there is no place for military
horrors
Pablo Picasso
Deux femmes courant sur la plage
Two Women Running on the Beach
1922
Musée Picasso, Paris

64. olga_oes
The Beach and the Great European Painters
La plage et les grands peintres européens
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