The clocks have gone back so this week’s light-filled painting, of pleasure-seekers strolling along the beach at Trouville, is a tonic for anyone dispirited by the short days and dark afternoons of early November. Its choice also coincides neatly with National Sausage Appreciation Week: the picture was painted by Eugene Boudin, whose name, in translation, may be rendered as “Mr Sausage”.

In 1869, while reviewing the pictures in the annual Paris exhibition, the Salon, the critic Castagnary noted that Boudin had invented an entirely new genre of seascape, “which is his alone and which consists of painting the beach and all those exotic figures from high society which summer brings to our coastal resorts. They are viewed from a distance but what finesse and liveliness in these figures which, standing or sitting, move on the sand. How good they look in their surroundings and what a good picture the ensemble creates. The clouds move in the sky, the tide rises, the breeze plays with flounces and skirts. This is the ocean and you can almost smell the salty fragrance.”

The picture shown here, which can be seen in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, is one of Boudin’s earliest and freshest essays in this new type of painting. It was done in 1863, the year when the Deauville-Trouville railway station opened, bringing with it ever-increasing numbers of visitors to the Normandy coast. The invasion was led by the French monarchy and aristocracy, who created a new vogue for sea-bathing which soon turned modest Trouville – hitherto a picturesque fishing village – into a thriving resort. They were soon followed by hordes of the bourgeoisie, who had only recently discovered the novelty of leisure time and were looking for ways to fill it. Hotels and boarding houses were built, not just in...

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