Two houses in Maassluis (recto); Two views of a house surrounded by trees (verso)

Made as a young artist in 1839, when still a student of Andreas Schelfhout at the Academy in The Hague, this watercolour probably depicts the house of Jongkind’s mother in Maassluis, West of Rotterdam. He would move to Paris only in 1846, and there become a precursor to the impressionists, but his free approach to the study of landscape from life is already apparent in the present work. Much of the watercolour's freshness is lost in a painted version at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which composition largely corresponds to (inv. E1924-3-84 (Sutton, op. cit., no. 49, ill.). The painting is dated 1871, suggesting that Jongkind kept – and cherished – the much earlier work for most of his life as a souvenir of his home country and native town.