Dutch Fishing Boats; verso: Sketches of Boats

Johan Barthold Jongkind

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This Dutch seascape was painted in Nevers, France, where Jongkind lived in 1870 to 1872 during the Franco-Prussian War. The bright palette is very different from that used by Jongkind's compatriots of the Hague School and was influenced by the French Impressionists. Thus the subject of Dutch fishing boats, while reminiscent of seventeenth-century Dutch marines, has a less moody, more upbeat feeling. This is the seaside not of poor fishermen but of sunny fruitful harvests, more akin to representations of happy vacationers at Honfleur by Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet, both of whom Jongkind knew.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art