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拍品专文
The Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind moved to Paris in 1846 where he joined the studio of Eugéne Isabey (1803-1886). The following year Isabey brought Jongkind with him to Honfleur to paint and this visit made a lasting impression on Jongkind who would return to Honfleur on various occasions. In Paris Jongkind alligned himself with many French painters including Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) and Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) and exhibited at historical shows as the Salon des Refusés. Unlike most of the Barbizon painters, Jongkind painted his oils in his studio, basing them on the spontaneous drawings and watercolors he made en plein air. The period between 1860 and 1875 is considered to be the most important period in Jongkind's creative life. In colour, texture and atmosphere it includes every element of the renowned artist's creative hand. Jongkind continued to work in Holland throughout his life, but it was in France that he felt most energized, continuing to develop his technique, and exploring the play of light on land and water. He achieved a lyrical rendering of mood with bold use of dark and light patches of sky and his brushstroke grew ever more vigorous and free. For his vision and his fragmented touch, Jongkind is rightly considered as a precursor of Impressionism.
L'entrée du Port de Honfleur was painted just one year after the first exhibition at the Salon des Refusès in 1863, in which Jongkind had exhibited. The Impressionists' debt to Jongkind was readily acknowledged. Pissarro exclaimed: 'Landscape without Jongkind would have a totally different aspect' (see: Jongkind and the Pre-Impressionists: Painters of the Ecole Saint-Simon, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, 1977, p. 7) and Manet touted him as 'the father of the School of Landscapists' (see: Ibid., p. 7). However, it is Monet who paid his mentor the greatest tribute in 1890 when he spoke in reverence of his first encounter with Jongkind: ‘ (…) His painting was too new and in far too artistic a strain to be then, in 1862, appreciated at its true worth. Neither was there ever anyone so modest and retiring. He was a simple good-hearted man...and timid. That day he was very talkative. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained to me the why and the wherefore of his manner and thereby completed the teachings that I had already received from Boudin. From that time on he was my real master, and it was to him that I owed the final education of my eye’ (quoted in: ‘The Artist as a Young Man’, in: Art News Annual, Vol. XXVI, 1957, p. 198; translated from Thiébault-Sisson, `Claude Monet, an Interview’, in: Le Temps, 27 November 1900).
The port of Honfleur attracted many artists in the mid-nineteenth century who found their inspiration in the ever-changing weather of the Normandy coast. Jongkind regularly visited the village from 1860 onwards, when he used to spend several summer months each year, in the company of his friends Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Adolphe Cals. In a letter dated 22 August 1865 Jongkind wrote: 'I have left Paris and here I am at Honfleur, the place to which I return as always with renewed pleasure. It is a little seaport where there are always ten or twenty ships of all nations, not counting the merchantmen and the fishing boats of the same countries. I tell you this, as it is very interesting for my studies' (quoted in: Jongkind and the Pre-Impressionists: Painters of the Ecole Saint-Simon, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, 1977, p. 40). That the activity around the harbour formed a constant inspiration to Jongkind is visible in the present lot, where the artist masterfully captures the subtle reflections of the light on the water, the activities on the water and the movements of the clouds. l'Entrée du Port de Honfleur shows Jongkind working with a freshness and spontaneity that is absent in the views of Honfleur that he painted from recollection later in life. It is painted with a palette that the French art critic Edmund de Goncourt (1822-1896) characterized in his Journal of 1882 as an 'enchantment of colours, greyish and splashy... in a watery radiance'.
L'entrée du Port de Honfleur was painted just one year after the first exhibition at the Salon des Refusès in 1863, in which Jongkind had exhibited. The Impressionists' debt to Jongkind was readily acknowledged. Pissarro exclaimed: 'Landscape without Jongkind would have a totally different aspect' (see: Jongkind and the Pre-Impressionists: Painters of the Ecole Saint-Simon, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, 1977, p. 7) and Manet touted him as 'the father of the School of Landscapists' (see: Ibid., p. 7). However, it is Monet who paid his mentor the greatest tribute in 1890 when he spoke in reverence of his first encounter with Jongkind: ‘ (…) His painting was too new and in far too artistic a strain to be then, in 1862, appreciated at its true worth. Neither was there ever anyone so modest and retiring. He was a simple good-hearted man...and timid. That day he was very talkative. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained to me the why and the wherefore of his manner and thereby completed the teachings that I had already received from Boudin. From that time on he was my real master, and it was to him that I owed the final education of my eye’ (quoted in: ‘The Artist as a Young Man’, in: Art News Annual, Vol. XXVI, 1957, p. 198; translated from Thiébault-Sisson, `Claude Monet, an Interview’, in: Le Temps, 27 November 1900).
The port of Honfleur attracted many artists in the mid-nineteenth century who found their inspiration in the ever-changing weather of the Normandy coast. Jongkind regularly visited the village from 1860 onwards, when he used to spend several summer months each year, in the company of his friends Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Adolphe Cals. In a letter dated 22 August 1865 Jongkind wrote: 'I have left Paris and here I am at Honfleur, the place to which I return as always with renewed pleasure. It is a little seaport where there are always ten or twenty ships of all nations, not counting the merchantmen and the fishing boats of the same countries. I tell you this, as it is very interesting for my studies' (quoted in: Jongkind and the Pre-Impressionists: Painters of the Ecole Saint-Simon, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, 1977, p. 40). That the activity around the harbour formed a constant inspiration to Jongkind is visible in the present lot, where the artist masterfully captures the subtle reflections of the light on the water, the activities on the water and the movements of the clouds. l'Entrée du Port de Honfleur shows Jongkind working with a freshness and spontaneity that is absent in the views of Honfleur that he painted from recollection later in life. It is painted with a palette that the French art critic Edmund de Goncourt (1822-1896) characterized in his Journal of 1882 as an 'enchantment of colours, greyish and splashy... in a watery radiance'.