Watercolor played an especially important role in Jongkind’s practice. Working directly from nature, he used fluid washes and quick strokes to record his first response to a landscape, an approach that deeply impressed Monet and his contemporaries.
Provenance
Private collectionCatalogue note
Johan Barthold Jongkind was an important precursor to Impressionism, admired for his rapid handling and his ability to capture the changing effects of light and atmosphere. Although Dutch by birth, he spent much of his career in France, where his increasingly free approach to landscape painting proved influential to a younger generation of artists. Claude Monet, who worked alongside Jongkind on the Normandy coast in the 1860s, later called him his “true master,” crediting him with the “definitive education of my eye.”[1]
Watercolor played an especially important role in Jongkind’s practice. Working directly from nature, he used fluid washes and quick strokes to record his first response to a landscape, an approach that deeply impressed Monet and his contemporaries.[2] Émile Zola admired this apparent spontaneity, describing Jongkind’s works as retaining the freshness of sketches made before the first impression could escape.[3]
Our watercolor is characteristic of this fresh and economical approach. A low bridge leads toward a distant village and church spire, while broad washes define the sky, water, and surrounding landscape. With only a few quick touches of darker pigment, Jongkind gives structure to the scene without sacrificing its immediacy. The result is a remarkably light and atmospheric image, preserving the freshness of a landscape observed firsthand.
This note was written by Emily Mohan
[1] François Thiébault-Sisson, “Claude Monet, an Interview,” Le Temps, Paris, November 27, 1900, p. 3.
[2] Jongkind’s practice of making fluid watercolor and oil sketches en plein air greatly impressed Monet, Eugène Boudin and Camille Pissarro; see Gallery 19C, Johan Barthold Jongkind, artist biography.
[3] Émile Zola, “Jongkind,” Lettres parisiennes, La Cloche, January 24, 1872, n.p.