Summer Days
From Sorolla to Hopper
28 March - 6 September 2015
Eugène Boudin
Figures on the Beach in Trouville
1869 Oil on panel, 29 x 47 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Winslow Homer
ca. 1869
Oil on canvas, 29.3 x 24 cm
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Walt Kuhn
1915
Oil on canvas, 76 x 102 cm
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
On the beach
The seaside witnessed the development of fashions, behaviours, pastimes and equipment that painters captured on canvas in styles ranging from Impressionist, précieux and naturalist to avant-garde language. Whether they are concerned merely with depicting customs or with experimentation and exploring form, these works attest to a world which, although now long past, is a direct predecessor of today’s beach tourism.
Strolls, children at play and family gatherings on the sand, sunbathing, women’s complex beach attire, bathing huts and ropes are just some of the elements of these settings that became part of nineteenthcentury bourgeois life.