Which artist encouraged Claude Monet to paint landscapes outdoors in Normandy?

Eugène Boudin encouraged Claude Monet to paint landscapes outdoors in Normandy.

Monet met Boudin in Le Havre in the 1850s, when Monet was still a teenager known mainly for drawing caricatures. Boudin, an established painter of coastal scenes, invited him to work outside and observe changing light directly. Monet later credited Boudin with teaching him to love painting nature.

This relationship mattered because outdoor observation became central to Monet’s mature style. Rather than constructing every scene in a studio, he studied weather, reflections, clouds, and fleeting color on location. Boudin’s influence did not make Monet a follower; Monet developed a much more radical approach to broken brushwork and shifting light.

Boudin is sometimes confused with Monet’s later Impressionist colleagues, such as Manet or Renoir. He was older than Monet and belonged to an earlier generation of French landscape painters, but his attention to skies and atmosphere helped prepare the way for Impressionism.