Un Grain à Trouville

Description

Félix-Hilaire Buhot
France, 1847–1898
A Squall at Trouville (Un grain à Trouville)
1874
Etching
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Bequest of Margaret Watson Parker, 1954/1.270
Buhot was a native of Normandy, although he moved to Paris as a young man to study painting. He was also an influential and popular printmaker. This view of a storm blowing onto the beach at Trouville, upending chairs and forcing vacationers to flee, captures the same approach used by Boudin: a frieze-like arrangement of figures enjoying the leisure pursuits along the beach. Here the wind-whipped flags that animate Monet’s view of the Hôtel des Roches Noires seen nearby are employed to presage a storm.
(Normandy show)
The fashionable resort of Trouville, on the Norman coast near Le Havre, drew the well heeled tourist who desired all the accouterments of the city. Luxurious hotels were the main feature of the shoreline and represented an urban encroachment upon nature. Buhot's etching of a storm that has come up along the coast, causing elegant vactioners to flee their pavilions and beach chairs, reveals his interest in atmospheric conditions as well as the sudden motion of people, flags, and waves.