Detail of On the Beach Boulogne-sur-Mer by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: On the Beach, Boulogne-sur-Mer

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: 1868

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 12 3/4 × 26 in. (32.4 × 66 cm)
Framed: 21 1/2 × 34 1/2 in. (54.6 × 87.6 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (85.498)

In this unusually elongated canvas lacking realistic perspective, Manet provided a glimpse into a new form of outdoor leisure in the nineteenth century: seaside tourism. He based this scene of fashionably dressed tourists on multiple outdoor sketches made during a visit to Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1868. While there, he wrote to Degas inviting him on a trip to London and suggested they might find a ready market for their work in the English capital.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844742