Curtis_O_Baer_2010

38. Johann Barthold Jongkind Dutch, 1819 – 1891

1848 – 50

View of Montmartre

Pencil on paper 8 5 ⁄ 8 x 12 3 ⁄ 8

inches ( 22 x 31 . 5 cm) Inscribed and dated in pencil: Montmartre 1850 Estate sale stamp lower right: Lugt 1401

provenance Vente Jongkind, Paris, December 7 – 8 , 1891 ; Collection Curtis O. Baer

literature Atlanta, 1985 , cat. no. 76 , p. 134

Jongkind left Holland for France in 1846 to study painting in the studio of Eugène Isabey, the Romantic master of seascapes and urban views. He settled in Montmartre, which was then a semi-rural hamlet outside the Paris walls. Paris views became impor tant subjects for Jongkind in the late 1840 s and early 1850 s. The Baer drawing shows an undeveloped, untidy terrain at the top of the butte . Related works include the slightly larger watercolor in the Lugt collection View of Montmartre ( 25 . 7 x 41 . 5 cm), and a graphite study for the watercolor Vue de paris, depuis Montmartre ( 26 . 4 x 37 . 1 cm) in a private collection. However, the view depicted in the Baer drawing is not the same as in the aforementioned sheets, but it appears to share some landmarks. In cataloguing the Lugt drawing, Susan Galassi has indicated that the tree-crowned area might represent Montmartre cemetery. This terrain may correspond to the boldly hatched trees and buildings depicted beyond a wall at the right-hand edge of the Baer sheet. The

buildings at the lower left in the present work might be commercial structures, or examples of the makeshift, residential shacks that housed day laborers and scavengers in the zone around the city walls during the second half of the nineteenth century. Johan Barthold Jongkind, View of Montmartre . Brush and brown ink, watercolor and black chalk, 25 . 7 x 41 . 5 cm. Signed lower left. Fondation Custodia, Paris, 2000 -T. 1