This view from the left bank of the Seine River encompasses the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre, at left, and the Palais d'Orsay and Hôtel de Salm (Palais de la Légion d'Honneur), at right. Yet the prominence of the industrial barges and crane underscore the appeal of Paris’s working waterfront to Jongkind’s aesthetic sensibility. Jongkind first moved from Holland to France in 1846, sketching along the banks of the Seine from 1849 onward. In his studio, he transformed the sketches into oil paintings such as this one, which he showed in the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris.
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Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): Jongkind 54
sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 3, 1935, no. 74, as "Les bords de la Seine devant les Tuileries, en 1854," for Fr 10,800; private collection, New York (in 1967); private collection, U.S.A. (in 1969); Meta Cecile Schwarz, New York (possibly by 1967, definitely by 1988–d. 2001)
Brussels. location unknown. "Exposition générale des beaux-arts," 1854, no. 529 (as "Vue du quai d'Orsay, à Paris").
Paris. Palais des Beaux-Arts. "Exposition universelle de 1855," May 15–?, 1855, no. 3425 (as "Vue prise du quai d'Orsay").
Paris. Galerie H. Odermatt—Ph. Cazeau. "Maîtres des XIXe et XXe siècles," April 29–June 30, 1987, unnumbered cat. (p. 7; as "Vue du Quai d'Orsay").
Etienne Moreau-Nélaton. Jongkind raconté par lui-même. Paris, 1918, pp. 36, 145.
Paul Signac. Jongkind. Paris, 1927, p. 15.
Carla Gottlieb. "Observations on Johan-Barthold Jongkind as a Draughtsman." Master Drawings 5, no. 3 (1967), p. 298, 300, 303 n. 16, fig. 4, as in a private collection, New York.
Carla Gottlieb. "Johan-Barthold Jongkind à l'Exposition générale de Bruxelles en 1854." Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique Bulletin 18, nos. 3–4 (1969), pp. 150, 153–54, fig. 3, as in a private collection, U.S.A.
Maîtres des XIXe et XXe siècles. Exh. cat., Galerie H. Odermatt—Ph. Cazeau. Paris, 1987, pp. 7–8, ill. (color), mentions three variants of this picture in gouache and oil.
Adolph Stein et al. Jongkind: Catalogue critique de l'œuvre. Vol. 1, Peintures. Paris, 2003, p. 101, no. 130, ill., as "Le quai d'Orsay et la machine à guinder, Paris".
Rhea Sylvia Blok. "Acquisitions: Johan Barthold Jongkind, Supplement to the Catalogue of 2004." E-News: Fondation Custodia no. 5 (July 2013), p. 17, reproduces a related painting (Hefting 1975, no. 117).
Asher Ethan Miller and Sophie Scully. "'The Pont Neuf': A Paris View by Johan Barthold Jongkind Reconsidered." Metropolitan Museum Journal 50 (2015), pp. 187–90, 192 n. 22, figs. 15 (color), 21 (infrared detail), state that Jongkind developed the composition over at least a two-year period; discuss various studies for and earlier versions of this composition; call it "the final essay of this subject"; note that infrared reflectography reveals slight adjustments to the composition; mention the presence of the tricolor as part of the Dutch-born artist's self-presentation as a French painter.
Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, ed. Discovering the Impressionists: Memoirs of Paul Durand-Ruel. Rev. ed. Paris, 2024, pp. 20, 247 n. 10, identify it as number 5452 in Paris 1855.
Hefting (1975) reproduces four works related to this painting: a pencil sketch of the right side of the composition (no. 67; Musée du Louvre, Paris), a watercolor study of the crane (no. 111; Musée du Louvre, Paris), an oil painting dated 1852 (no. 106; Musée des Beaux-Arts Salies, Bagnères-de-Bigorre), and an undated oil (no. 117; now Fondation Custodia, Paris). Gottlieb (1967) illustrates a further related work, a watercolor (fig. 3, as whereabouts unknown).
Johan Barthold Jongkind (Dutch, Latrop 1819–1891 La-Côte-Saint-André)
1870
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