Le port de Honfleur, les grands voiliers

The port of Honfleur was a popular meeting ground for artists in the mid-nineteenth century who found inspiration in the ever-changing moods of nature particular to the Normandy coast. In 1846 Jongkind moved to Paris from his native Holland and joined the studio of Eugéne Isabey (1803-1886). The following year Isabey brought Jongkind with him to Honfleur to paint. The visit made a lasting impression on Jongkind who returned there on three occasions.

In August of 1865 Jongkind visited Honfleur a last time and remained there until the end of September, making side trips to visit Eugéne Boudin (1824-1898) in Trouville and to see Le Havre and Etretat. Jongkind was a prolific letter writer and much of his correspondence is preserved. This gives us an invaluable insight into his life and artistic theories. In addition much was written about him. 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). Les grands voiliers Honfleur was painted during this visit and it shows Jongkind working with a freshness and spontaneity that is absent in the views of Honfleur that he painted from recollection later in life. Jongkind was a keen observer of nature, and the subtle effects of the light on the water and the movement of the clouds as they scuttle across the sky are captured in Les grands voiliers Honfleur with vigorous brushwork. The subject is taken from direct study of the port: the movement of the ships, the life around the port, the picturesque effects of jetties, masts and spars. 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' (Ibid., p. 29).

Les grands voiliers Honfleur was painted just two years 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' (Ibid., p. 7), and Manet who touted him as 'the father of the School of Landscapists' (Ibid., p. 7), but it is Monet who paid his mentor the greatest tribute when he said: 'His painting was too new and in far too artistic a strain to be then, in 1862, appreciated at its true worth (...). 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: F. Thibault-Sisson, 'Claude Monet, an Interview', Le Temps, 27 November 1900).

The period between 1860 and 1875 is considered to be the most important period in the artist'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.