Eugène Boudin

"When I got back , where I had made several sketches of the harbour exit, I thought of placing the sun in the background. I liked the picture so much that I painted it ten times over, with its three-ma…"

"I find my work increasingly more straining, in particular since I have been trying to finish my studies outside."

"They love my little ladies on the beach, and some people say that there's a thread of gold to exploit there."

"I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes."

"I am a loner, a daydreamer who has been content to remain in his part of the world and look at the sky. The future will treat me as it does all of us. I am very much afraid it may be oblivion."

"I regret I no longer have the years of youth needed to create a beautiful series of views of this place, which would in any case be rather difficult to paint due to the monuments, which require a good…"

"The peasants have their painters, Millet, Jaque, Breton; and that is a good thing.. ..Well and good: but between you and me, the bourgeois walking along the jetty towards the sunset, has just as much …"

"..my trip to Venice will have been my swansong."