Eugène Boudin was one of the first French landscape artists to take his easel out of the studio. He painted along the coastlines of Normandy, Brittany, and Hauts-de-France, where it had become fashionable for the Parisian middle classes to escape to in the mid 1800s.

Boudin first visited the seaside village of Berck in 1874, returning regularly over the next twenty years and creating over one hundred and twenty paintings there. There, he could capture his experience of nature whilst at the same time record either the elegant women of Parisian society or the local fisherwomen socialising on the beach.

Working closely beside his young protégé Claude Monet, Boudin’s radical en plein air technique is celebrated as a pivotal precursor to the Impressionist movement, with whom Boudin exhibited at the group’s first show in 1874. Monet claimed later in life that, “If I have become a painter, I owe it to Eugène Boudin”.

'Berck, groupe de pêcheuses assises sur la grève' is characteristic of the landscapes that defined Boudin’s career. Celebrated for his ability to capture the powerful changing conditions of the seashore, Camille Corot once crowned him “the king of skies”. In the present work, the sky is transforming from grey to blue with the clouds pushing across it. Taking up over half the canvas, nature is the focus, with the figures seated on the sand watching the boats come in.

Boudin was not the only artist inspired by the landscape of Berck, with Manet painting twenty works there the summer of 1873. One of this group is now in the collection of Musée d’Orsay ('Sur la plage'). Other works from this Berck period are now also in many important museum collections such as Norton Simon ('Low Tide, Berck', 1886), National Gallery of Art, Washington ('Women on the Beach at Berck'', 1888), Museum of Fine Arts Boston ('The Inlet at Berck (Pas-de Calais)', 1882) and The Fitzwilliam Museum of Art ('The Fish-Cart, Berck', 1880).