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Carmen Thyssen Collection
Eugène Boudin

Venice, The Grand Canal

1895
Oil on panel.
26 x 35.2 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1998.54
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 19th Century. The Impressionist Period 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
"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 draughtsmanship and long stays in the city, like Ziem used to do in the past."

Boudin was no longer a young man when he visited Venice. His health was poor, but he insisted on painting from nature and, in the previous years, had spent the winters in the Midi in order to continue to paint out of doors. Boudin discovered Venice in 1892, and returned there in 1893 and 1894, but during those three stays he only made five paintings and probably a number of drawings.

In 1895, having familiarised himself with the light of the city, he produced, in two months, seventy-five paintings and sketches. He found there some of the light of the north, and was surprised that some painters had deformed to such a degree the atmosphere of Venice. He confided his thoughts to his dealer Durand-Ruel: Venice is "somewhat disguised by the artists who usually paint Venice, who have disfigured it by turning it into a city heated by the brightest and hottest sun. On the contrary, Venice, like all luminous cities, has a grey hue, the atmosphere is mild and misty and the sky arrays itself with clouds, just like the sky of our Norman and Dutch regions." With these words, Boudin provided an answer to the possible criticisms of those who, having in their memory Ziem's flamboyant paintings, would accuse him of not having understood the city. For some, Venice, the gateway to the East, had the colours of gold and of the sunset, while Boudin, who only trusted his own eyes, observed nature with an objective and innocent look.

The seventy-five paintings executed in 1895 are mostly composed in the same manner. They have a frontal point of view, the subject takes up the most distant ground, while before the eyes of the beholder stretches the water of the Grand Canal with the gondolas sailing along. Boudin chose the best known views: la Salute, the Doge's Palace, the Giudecca. Occasionally, he wandered into the less popular areas. Half a dozen works offer a variant of this composition: a building fills the left-hand side of the painting, while an oblique quay introduces a dynamically rising line; large sailing boats take up the centre of the picture. In such works, the architecture of Venice is substituted by the boats.

Such is in fact the composition of this painting from the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Two sailing boats are the central subject and Venice is only a backdrop. The brushstroke is lively and light, like a sketch. The marks left by the brush on the paint are long and horizontal, and they suggest, rather than outline, the subject. The gondola close to the quay is depicted with a few lines, and glides effortlessly over the water. The gondolier is only a sketched silhouette, but the painter's strokes are enough to convey a sense of movement and the position of his body. The three seated figures are represented with yellow and red patches of colour. The artist's acute eye and sensitivity are revealed in these unimportant details, which testify to his constant search for truth, for the essential and the instantaneous. The sky resembles the Norman skies full of fleecy clouds with leave little space to the light blue hues. The sailing boats could be in the ports of Deauville or Le Havre, but the gondola enables us to identify the scene. This work is the exact application of Boudin's views mentioned above: Venice, with its misty and damp atmosphere, can evoke his well-known Normandy.

In spite of his age and poor health, the artist remained active until the end. Boudin confided to his friend the painter Braquaval in May 1896: "my trip to Venice will have been my swansong."

Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin

19th Century19th Century - French paintingPaintingOilpanel
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Venice, The Grand Canal

Venice, The Grand Canal

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Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

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Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Catalogue  V2 (Spanish)

Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Catalogue V2 (Spanish)

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Venice, The Grand Canal. Venecia, el Gran Canal, 1895
Venice, The Grand Canal
Eugène Boudin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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Venice, The Grand Canal. Venecia, el Gran Canal, 1895
Venice, The Grand Canal
Eugène Boudin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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