Johan Jongkind

“a biography of Johan Jongkind with art-images”

“Jongkind's painting art in Musee d'Orsay, Paris”

“many free images of paintings, drawings and prints of Jongkind, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam”

“biography notes and dates of Jongkind, in the Dutch R.K.D. Archive, The Hague”

“Jongkind divides his colors more and more, puts them in juxtaposition, and by about 1875 he is on equal footing with Sisley, and later with Seurat.”

“Watercolor provides him with an autonomous art-form, and attracts him with a charm, of which he is fully aware, and because of this he prepares all the means necessary to capture on paper the beauty of values, whether they be questions of color or of balance.”

“He has spent his childhood near a small port [Vlaardingen, near Rotterdam ]. The boats on the quayside, the proud three-masters leaving their home waters to sail the seas have always haunted his imagination and fed his imagination.. .His views of the river w:Scheldt, near Antwerp, painted during his most colorful period, are among his most memorable works.”

“As he painted them [the sailing ships, in the harbor of Le Havre ] again that summer of 1865, Courbet and Whistler were his neighbours. At Deauville the robust Courbet reveled in swimming and was enjoying himself as usual. Whistler was with him. Courbet still spoke of him as his pupil, although Whistler had outgrown his influence.”

“..in 1863 [Jongkind] begins the most beautiful series of watercolors that exists in the world.”

“One must not forget that Boudin had received lessons from a master, Jongkind, whose oeuvre, especially in the watercolors, is the origin along with Corot of what has been called Impressionism.”

“He painted them 'after life', but one has to agree on the definition of this phrase insofar as he was concerned. A painting by Jongkind 'after life' is not a straightforward copy of the motif he had settled on. It is the reproduction of the same subject treated through watercolour. His first sketch is a watercolour. It is with his watercolour brush that he captured directly the impression of nature”

“One of the most precious gifts he [Jongkind] owed Schelfhout was his initiation to quick sketching after nature, rendering the full aspect of a landscape through a wash of summary colours over a nervous and solidly constructed drawing.”

“One must be particularly knowledgeable in order to render the sky and the land with this apparent disorder, here [in Jongkind's art, showed at the Salon of 1868] everything is true (French: 'vrai').”

“There at the moment in Honfleur.. ..Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously.. .There's lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful..”

“He works himself up into a frenzy, on order to make great strides, before returning to Paris.”

“With him [Jongkind] all lies in impression.”

“Jongkind's craft hardly concerns him; and this results in the fact that, before his canvases, it does not concern you either. The sketch finished, the painting completed, you do not trouble yourself with the execution, it disappears before the power of the charm of the effect..”

“You know that the only marine painter that we have, Jongkind, is dead to art. He is completely mad.”

“Monsieur Jongkind is a very fine Colorist. His slightly over-bright colors belong to him alone, his vividly sketched landscapes have great character, his paintings could be recognized among thousands. This is a fairly rare merit today. Monsieur Jongkind is opening up a very pretty part in art. It is not a royal highway, but where he walks by himself, without being elbowed out.”

“Eight days ago I left Paris and here I am at Honfleur, the place to which I return, as always, with new pleasure. It is a little seaport where there are ten or twenty ships of all nations; not counting the fishing vessels of the same nations. I tell you that this is very interesting for my studies.”