Johan Barthold JONGKIND (1819-1891)

"Street in a Dutch Village"

Oil on canvas signed lower right 43,2 x 60,2 cm
Antique wood and gilded stucco frame 67 x 84 cm
From the Posadas Collection in Buenos Aires

"Jongkind's work is a link between the works of Corot and Monet"

Johan Barthold JONGKIND was a Dutch painter who lived and worked mainly in France. Among the precursors of Impressionism, he is clearly the most recognized as such. Edouard Manet, himself a precursor of this artistic movement, called Jongkind "the father of modern landscape". Claude Monet was guided by his audacity and his representations of nature which announced impressionism as early as 1860, 13 years before the first "salons" which were to revolutionize the fine arts.

Born in 1819, Johan Barthold Jongkind studied drawing in The Hague, where he became a friend of Eugène Isabey and followed him to Paris in 1846. Together they discovered Normandy, from Honfleur to Fécamp, from Yport to Saint-Valéry-en-Caux. Back in Paris, Jongkind sends to the Salon a View of the Harfleur harbor, acquired by the State (Musée de Picardie, Amiens). From 1862 to 1865, Jongkind travels many times to Normandy and gets close to the greatest painters and poets of the time; from Corot to Sisley, from Courbet to Baudelaire, from Boudin to Claude Monet, Jongkind will quickly become an essential painter. If the Norman landscapes are the most numerous in Jongkind's work, the artist also leaves us views of his native country where the characters are treated with strength and character.

Our painting is an important work whose preparatory work "Street in a Dutch village", a watercolor of the same subject and measuring 16 cm by 20 cm, is in the Louvre museum. This watercolor is reproduced in Victorine Hefting's book page 118 under the number 200.
Our painting left France for Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, and was exhibited by the Witcom Gallery in 1939 in Buenos Aires. The painting is reproduced in the catalog of the exhibition "Exposicion de Arte Frances, escuela 1830 y moderna" from May 22 to June 10 of 1939, organized by Luis D. Alvarez.
In this work, Jongkind has used a skillful game of transparencies to paint the cloudy and moving sky, and has energetically brushed the characters in full pate to give them more power. The composition is very classical with vanishing lines that converge towards the mill. The depth created here is reinforced by the railroad tracks.
The painting is in perfect condition on its original canvas. The beautiful wooden frame and gilded stucco is certainly original too.

Hundreds of Jongkind's works are exhibited all over the world, in the most important museums:

Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid), Musée national des beaux-arts d'Alger, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Musée d'art moderne André-Malraux in Le Havre, Musée Carnavalet (Paris), Phoenix Art Museum (Arizona), Birmingham Museums Trust, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Musée du Louvre (Paris), Musée d'Orsay (Paris), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen), Musée Faure (Aix-les-Bains), Petit Palais (Paris), Musée d'art et d'histoire (Geneva), National Gallery (London), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), Art Institute of Chicago, ...
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