1328 - Johan Barthold Jongkind

Johan Barthold Jongkind The large market square in Côte Saint André Pen and black ink. 40 x 63.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated lower centre: Jongkind 1883. Provenance Paul Brandt Collection, Amsterdam 1977 (Label on the reverse). – Belgian private collection. Exhibitions Stedelijk Museum, Moderne Dekeningen, 1971/72, cat. nr. 38. - Singer Memorial Foundation, Laren 1977, cat. nr. 37 (labels on the back for both references). Without Jongkind, the landscape would look quite different, wrote Camille Pissarro in 1886 about Johann Barthold Jongkind. Thirty years later, another artist, Paul Signac, paid tribute to him: It is not enough to admire Jongkind as a painter; one must love him as a friend – that tender and unhappy man who, despite his suffering, has left us a body of work full of serenity and strength. Jongkind was a great artist; his work was influential, and his significance as a forerunner of Impressionism was also recognised by the Goncourt brothers and Zola. Born in the Netherlands, Jongkind spent his entire life in France, the final years in Côte Saint-André in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, where this striking watercolour was painted.