In the nineteenth century the seaside came to be viewed as the ideal spot to escape the bad air and diseases of the increasingly crowded and polluted cities created by the industrial revolution. The spread of the railway system also made travel easier, swifter and more comfortable. In France, entire towns were created in the space of couple of decades to cater to the needs and comfort of an urban class migrating en masse to the northern seaside in the summer months and to the shores of the Mediterranean in the winter.

In our first lecture we will follow how the new artists of the era – Boudin, Courbet, Monet, Manet, Degas, among others – responded to the discovery of the seaside in their own travels and depictions of the modern resorts, like Etretat, Deauville, Trouville, Ste Adresse or Dieppe, on the coast of Normandy or Antibes in the Riviera.