Gerbe de Fleurs (a pair)

Eugène Boudin, the “King of the skies”, was the teacher of Claude Monet. He was one of the first artists to practice plein air painting and introduced this method to the 18-year-old Monet. Gerbe de Fleurs is a significant masterpiece in the late stage of Boudin’s exploration of Floral themes. Influenced by the Dutch still life tradition and incorporating plein air techniques, the paintings present flowers that are both rigorously detailed and vividly portrayed. The pair forms a visual dialogue: one canvas in cool blue tones, restrained and enduring; the other in bright yellow hues, rich and exuberant, which demonstrates masterful command of colour and refined brushwork. The works also bear witness to the resonance between art and its era: the development of synthetic pigments, the invention of portable paint tubes, and the proliferation of railways provided unprecedented convenience for artists’ plein air painting, creating the epochal conditions for the emergence of Impressionism.