Eugène Boudin is relatively unknown to most casual art fans, but the French landscape painter couldn’t have been more influential. It was in his frame shop that Constant Troyon and Jean-François Millet exhibited, and it was Boudin who encouraged a budding Claude Monet to paint en plein air, or outdoors. Boudin’s beach scenes, often depicting sharply attired vacationers, are some of the hidden treasures found in Impressions of Light, on display through January at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.

Although the exhibit mainly focuses on Monet’s landscapes, 20 of which are featured, all on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, works by contemporaries such as Boudin, Troyon, Camille Corot, Camille Pissarro, Charles-François Daubigny and Paul Signac add context. Corot’s realist landscapes prefigured Monet’s plein air work, while Signac’s move toward pointillism came in direct response to the loose brushstrokes of Monet and the impressionists.

For the most part, the exhibit traces Monet’s evolution from Corot-influenced realist to a master of light and atmosphere, with his brush following his travels throughout France. In the mid-1870s, the hub was Argenteuil, where he lived among a family of artists including Renoir, Manet and Alfred Sisley, and painted the snowy street scene Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argenteuil, in Winter (1875) and Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil (1875).

From there, it was on to Vétheuil, where he weathered the death of wife Camille, and painted Flower Beds at Vétheuil (1881) and Entrance to the Village of Vétheuil in Winter (1879), presented side by side in the gallery, depicting contrasting seasons in the garden he cultivated outside a house he shared with banker/art collector Ernest Hoschedé.

During a prolific period in the 1880s, Monet took up with Hoschedé’s wife Alice and moved to Normandy, which precipitated a switch to more coastal scenes, such as Seacoast at Trouville (1881). He also painted in Antibes along the French Riviera during this time, and once lamented his inability to capture the warmth, light and sense of the Mediterranean. Clearly, works such as Cap d’Antibes (1888) and Antibes Seen From Plateau (1888), with its exquisite use of blues, pinks and golds, prove him a more-than-capable hand.

There’s nary a water lily to be found in Impressions of Light, and perhaps that’s for the best. Monet has so many iconic associations that it’s refreshing to peruse lesser-known works such as the moody Morning on the Seine (1897), which found him rising at 3:30 a.m. so he could effectively capture the morning light as it dawned on the river.

Charing Cross Bridge (1900) is the last and perhaps most impressionistic of his exhibited works, similar in theme and palette to his Impression, Sunrise (1872), which gave the movement its name. Painted during a trip to London, its treatment of a section of the River Thames on an overcast day is striking in its vagueness, with only suggested forms of boats and buildings perceptible beyond the shadowy bridge. For Monet, who professed his love for the city, particularly its fog, something about this scene must have impressed him. He would paint this same bridge more than a dozen times.

Bellagio, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. daily, $15, $12 for seniors and Nevada residents and $10 for students, admission includes audio tour. 702.693.7871