Johan Barthold Jongkind Biography

Johan Jongkind was born on June 3, 1819 in the town of Lattrop in the Overijssel province of the Netherlands near the border with Germany. Trained at the art academy in The Hague, in 1846 he moved to the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France where he studied under Eug?ne Isabey and Francois-Edouard Picot.

Two years later, the Paris Salon accepted his work for its exhibition, and he received acclaim from critic Charles Baudelaire and later on from Emile Zola. However, an alcoholic and subject to depression, Johan Jongkind experienced a series of ups and downs.

Jongkind returned to live in Rotterdam in 1855, and remained there until 1860. Back in Paris, in 1861 he rented a studio on the rue de Chevreuse in Montparnasse where some of his paintings began to show glimpses of the impressionist style to come.

In 1862 Johan Jongkind befriended the young Claude Monet who later referred to Jongkind as the "master." The following year Jongkind exhibited at the first Salon des Refus?s. Despite several successes, in another of his down periods the impressionist group did not accept his work for their first exhibition in 1874.

In 1878 with his wife, fellow painter Jos?phine Fesser, Jongkind moved to live in the small town of La C?te-Saint-Andr? near Grenoble in the Is?re d?partement in the southeast of France where he died on February 9, 1891. He is buried there in the local cemetery.