Study of Clouds

Rather than a static backdrop to a larger landscape, the sky is the primary subject of this pastel sketch. Eugène Boudin captures the fleeting, luminous effect of stormy gray clouds about to give way to the promise of a bright blue sky. This subtle and masterful rendering of light garnered praise from Boudin’s contemporaries; Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot once called him “the king of the skies.”

Only the blue horizon line at the very bottom of the composition suggests that this is a seascape. The son of a mariner, Boudin was intimately familiar with the ever-changing atmosphere of the sea. An important influence on later Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Boudin was one of the first French landscape painters to work outdoors, producing sketches such as this one that he would later incorporate into larger paintings in his studio.