Johan Barthold JONGKIND
Latrop 1819 - La Côte-Saint-André 1891
Biography
Johan Barthold Jongkind was a pupil of Andreas Schelfhout in The Hague, and through his recommendation gained a scholarship to study with the French landscape painter and watercolourist Eugène Isabey in Paris. Jongkind arrived in Paris in 1846, soon meeting and befriending artists such as Théodore Rousseau, Camille Corot and Constant Troyon. In 1847 he made the first of several trips to Normandy, returning in 1850 and 1851 in the company of Isabey. He made his Salon debut in 1848, and a few years later gained the support of the art dealer Pierre Firmin Martin, who was to play a crucial role in promoting the group of landscape artists who are today known as the pre-Impressionists. Following the Exposition Universelle of 1855, where his work met with little success, Jongkind fell into an alcoholic depression and returned to Holland. He lived and worked in Rotterdam but achieved little commercial or financial success. The proceeds of a benefit auction organized by Martin on Jongkind’s behalf - which included works by such artists and friends as Corot, Isabey, Troyon and Rousseau, as well as François Bonvin, Charles-François Daubigny, Gabriel-Alexandre Decamps and Félix Ziem - allowed him to return to Paris in 1860. Three years later he took part in the Salon des Refusés, and thereafter enjoyed a number of productive and successful years. He spent much time in Normandy, where he met Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet, and also returned frequently to his native Holland until 1869. He stopped exhibiting at the Salon in 1873, however, and the following year turned down an invitation to take part in the first Impressionist exhibition.
