Boudin's father had thus abandoned seafaring, and his son gave it up too, having no real vocation for it, though he preserved to his last days much of a sailor's character: frankness, accessibility, and open-heartedness.

At the age of 22 he abandoned the world of commerce, started painting full-time, and travelled to Paris the following year and then through Flanders.

In 1850 he earned a scholarship that enabled him to move to Paris, where he enrolled as a student in the studio of Eugène Isabey and worked as a copyist at the Louvre.

He also worked with Troyon and Isabey, and in 1859 met Gustave Courbet who introduced him to Charles Baudelaire, the first critic to draw Boudin's talents to public attention when the artist made his debut at the 1859 Paris Salon.

Late in his life, after the death of his wife in 1889, Boudin spent every winter in the south of France as a refuge from his own poor health, and from 1892 to 1895 made regular trips to Venice.