Johan Barthold JONGKIND
(Latrop 1819 - La Côte-Saint-André 1891)
A Windmill on the Butte-aux-Cailles, Paris
Sold
Pen and brown ink and brown wash.
Dated and inscribed butte aux cailles / 17 7bre 1849 at the lower right centre [the word ‘cailles’ written over another word].
Further inscribed Moulin des prés at the lower left and with colour notes moulin gris / [?] jaun[e] / terrain rouge at the lower right corner.
204 x 292 mm. (8 x 11 1/2 in.)
Dated and inscribed butte aux cailles / 17 7bre 1849 at the lower right centre [the word ‘cailles’ written over another word].
Further inscribed Moulin des prés at the lower left and with colour notes moulin gris / [?] jaun[e] / terrain rouge at the lower right corner.
204 x 292 mm. (8 x 11 1/2 in.)
Drawn in 1849, when Jongkind was living in Paris and working in a studio on the Place Pigalle, this drawing depicts a windmill known as the Moulin des Prés on the Butte-aux-Cailles; a small hill on the southern outskirts of Paris. Rising to a modest height of 65 metres, the hill was named for the Cailles family that once farmed the land, and was covered with windmills until the late 19th century. The Butte was where Pilâtre du Rozier landed the first manned hot-air balloon in 1783, and was also one of the strongholds of the Paris Commune of 1871. The Butte remained a working-class village until it was incorporated into Paris in the late 19th century, and is today part of the 13th arrondissement of the city.
Jongkind had arrived in Paris in 1846, and was soon accompanying his teacher Isabey on sketching trips to Normandy and Brittany. He also, however, spent a considerable amount of time painting and sketching views of Paris, particularly in the year 1849. It is perhaps not surprising that he would have been drawn to the windmills of the Butte-aux-Cailles, given his fondness for the same motif in his Dutch views. An early sketchbook of 1849, in the collection of the Louvre, contains a number of views of Montmartre and its windmills, while a similar study of another windmill, drawn in 1852 at Sannois on the outskirts of Paris, is also in the Louvre.
The present sheet once belonged to the eminent scholar of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art John Rewald (1912-1994). According to a note on the former backing board, this drawing was given by him as a Christmas present in 1984 to his longtime research assistant Frances Weitzenhoffer (1944-1991). At her death in March 1991 the drawing returned to Rewald’s collection.
Jongkind had arrived in Paris in 1846, and was soon accompanying his teacher Isabey on sketching trips to Normandy and Brittany. He also, however, spent a considerable amount of time painting and sketching views of Paris, particularly in the year 1849. It is perhaps not surprising that he would have been drawn to the windmills of the Butte-aux-Cailles, given his fondness for the same motif in his Dutch views. An early sketchbook of 1849, in the collection of the Louvre, contains a number of views of Montmartre and its windmills, while a similar study of another windmill, drawn in 1852 at Sannois on the outskirts of Paris, is also in the Louvre.
The present sheet once belonged to the eminent scholar of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art John Rewald (1912-1994). According to a note on the former backing board, this drawing was given by him as a Christmas present in 1984 to his longtime research assistant Frances Weitzenhoffer (1944-1991). At her death in March 1991 the drawing returned to Rewald’s collection.
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.
Provenance
An unidentified collector’s mark, with a monogram in a circle (not in Lugt), stamped in green ink on the verso
John Rewald, New York (Lugt 1514a), his mark on the verso
Given by him to Frances R. Weitzenhoffer, New York, in December 1984
John Rewald, New York, after March 1991
His posthumous sale, New York, Christie’s, 22 May 1997, lot 198.
