Johan Barthold Jongkind Circle

Circle of JOHAN BARTHOLD JONGKIND (Lattrop, 1819-around Grenoble, 1891).
"Sunset."
Oil on panel.
Measurements: 25,5 x 33,5 cm; 34 x 41,5 cm (frame).

Painting of coastal theme portrayed in the magic hour of the sunset. The golden disk disappears behind the horizon line and says goodbye with an igneous symphony. On the shore, huts and precarious houses are outlined in front of the sea. The painting is inspired by the nocturnal seascapes of Johan Barthold Jongkind, resolved in pre-impressionist language.
Johan Barthold Jongkind was a Dutch painter and engraver considered one of the forerunners of impressionism. He studied art at the School of The Hague under the tutelage of the romantic painter Andreas Schelfhout, and painted his first pictures in the style of traditional Flemish painting. In 1846 he settled in Paris and became a pupil of Eugène Isabey until, in 1855, he was forced to return to Holland because of economic problems and settled in Rotterdam. He returned to Paris in April 1860, and from then on expressed his attraction for the marines during his stays on the Norman coast in Le Havre, Sainte-Adresse (see watercolor), Honfleur and Trouville. There he met Boudin and above all Monet, who sincerely acknowledged his debt to the Dutch artist: "to him I owe the definitive education of my eyes". He participated in the Salon des Refusés in 1863 with the painting Ruins of the Castle of Rosemont, next to Manet's controversial painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (Lunch on the Grass); both are now in the Musée d'Orsay. His landscapes of Normandy, of canals and beaches of the North Sea, of the banks of the Seine, of Paris, and later of Grenoble, translate in finely nuanced tones the light and atmosphere of those places. Contrary to the Impressionists, he painted his pictures in the studio after the sketches and watercolors he drew outside. Sometimes he repeated the same subject under different lights or in different seasons (a typically impressionist idea later adopted by his friend Monet). He led a disordered life and finally, with psychic problems (melancholy, paranoia) and alcoholic, he died in the asylum of Saint-Égrève near Grenoble. According to Monet, Jongkind's work, along with that of Corot and Boudin, is the origin of Impressionism.