Johan Barthold Jongkind

During his stay in Holland in 1867, Jongkind executed several views of the harbour of Antwerp. In L'Escaut près d'Anvers, effet du matin, he depicts the harbour busy with sailing and rowing boats, the crisp morning sky reflected in the shimmering water. In the distance, the cathedral with its 123-metre high tower dominates the city's skyline, with another, smaller tower and the roof of the St. Jakobus church visible to its left. In the foreground, the artist shows a part of the quay where two men are mending a boat. Following the tradition of Dutch landscape painting, Jongkind painted the horizon line in the lower part of the canvas, with the majority of the composition occupied by a vast expanse of sky filled with clouds.

Jongkind and his contemporary Eugène Boudin often painted together, and the mutual influence is visible in the style of the present work. Jongkind's emphasis on depicting the scene at a particular time of the day, and his atmospheric treatment of the sky and sea, with the boats and the clouds reflected on the water surface, played a key role in the development of the Impressionists, particularly Monet, who considered Jongkind to be the most important influence on his own painting. Executed some seven years before the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, L'Escaut près d'Anvers, effet du matin is a remarkable work confirming Jongkind's status as a father of Impressionism.

The first owner of the present work was Théophile Bascle, a wine merchant and a great collector and friend of Jongkind. After his death in 1883, his collection of 83 paintings and 21 watercolours by Jongkind, including the present work, were auctioned at Hôtel Drouot in Paris.