Jan Baptiste de Jonghe or Jean-Baptiste de Jonghe (
Kortrijk
Kortrijk ( , ; vls, Kortryk or ''Kortrik''; french: Courtrai ; la, Cortoriacum), sometimes known in English as Courtrai or Courtray ( ), is a Belgian city and municipality in the Flemish province of West Flanders.
It is the capital and larges ...
, 8 January 1785 –
Schaerbeek
( French and archaic Dutch, ) or (contemporary Dutch, ) is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the north-eastern part of the region, it is bordered by the City of Brussels, Etterbeek, Evere and ...
, 14 October 1844) was a Belgian painter, draughtsman, etcher and lithographer. He is known for his Romantic landscapes with people, herds and ruins.Jan Baptiste De Jonghe at the
Netherlands Institute for Art History
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center ...
In his graphic work he also made views of cities in the area of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands. He was an art professor at the Academy of Kortrijk and the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts.Dominique Vautier. "Jonghe, Jean-Baptiste de." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 6 May 2017
Life
Jan Baptiste de Jonghe was born in Kortrijk as the son of a wealthy businessman who was mayor of Kortrijk from 1805 to 1817. He received his first training at the Academie van Kortrijk, where he studied for two years.Jean-Baptiste De Jonghe, (Kortrijk 1785 – Antwerpen 1844) at the Broel Museum His drawing instructor was the sculptor Pieter Van Reable. He then went to study at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts.J. Immerzeel, ''De levens en Werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters'', Volume 2, J. C. van Kesteren, 1843, p. 89 Here one of his professors was the renowned animal and landscape painter
Balthasar Paul Ommeganck
Balthasar Paul Ommeganck (sometimes also: Paul Balthasar Ommeganck) (1755–1826) was a Flemish painter of landscape painter, landscapes and animal painter, animals active in Antwerp. Through his work and his role as an art teacher and founder o ...
. Ommeganck is believed to have set de Jonghe on the path of landscape and animal painting. When in 1812 he won the prize for landscape painting at a competition organized by the drawing academy of Ghent, he started to fully concentrate on this subject matter.''Annales de la Société d'émulation pour l'étude de l'histoire et des antiquités de la Flandre'', Volume 2, Société d'Émulation pour l'Étude de l'Histoire et des Antiquités de la Flandre, 1844, pp. 403-407
He participated in various other art competitions in Northern France and Belgium and was successful in Douai, Brussels and Bruges. He travelled in The Netherlands, France and England.
In 1823-1824 he was one of the lithographers who made lithographs and provided drawings for the publication ''Collection des principales vues des Pays-Bas'' ('Collection of principal views of the Netherlands') published by Dewasme.
In 1825 the Academy of Antwerp admitted de Jonghe as a member. The next year he was appointed professor at the Academy of drawing and architecture in Kortrijk. In 1828 he was admitted as associate member of the Academy of Amsterdam. In 1836 the Belgian government appointed him to the jury tasked to choose the artwork to be acquired by the Belgian state at that year's salon. In 1840, Belgian King Leopold I commissioned from the artist six landscape paintings of sites in the
Ardennes
The Ardennes (french: Ardenne ; nl, Ardennen ; german: Ardennen; wa, Årdene ; lb, Ardennen ), also known as the Ardennes Forest or Forest of Ardennes, is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges primarily in Be ...
.
In 1841 de Jonghe was appointed professor of landscape and animal painting at the Academy of Antwerp. He only served in that role for a brief period as he had to resign for family reasons in 1843. After this he was occupied with various commissions in Brussels.
De Jonghe also played an important role as a teacher at the Academy of Kortrijk, where he trained a new generation of painters between 1826 and 1841, including
Jean Baptiste Daveloose
Jean may refer to:
People
* Jean (female given name)
* Jean (male given name)
* Jean (surname)
Fictional characters
* Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character
* Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations
* J ...
and
Louis-Pierre Verwee
Louis-Pierre Verwee or Louis Pierre Verwée (Kortrijk, 19 March 1807 – City of Brussels, Brussels, November 1877) was a Belgians, Belgian painter known for his rural landscapes with cattle and winter landscapes.Louis de Winter, Louis Robbe and
Hendrik Frans Schaefels
Hendrik Frans Schaefels or Henri François Schaefels, also known as Rik Schaefels (Antwerp, 2 December 1827 – Antwerp, 9 June 1904), was a Belgian Romantic painter, draughtsman and engraver known for his seascapes, cityscapes, genre paintings, ...
.Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, the son of the artist and his wife Maria Theresia Commeijne, received his first training from his father and became a society portrait and genre painter who worked in Paris for a fashionable clientele.
The artist died in Schaerbeek in 1844 after a brief illness.
Work
Jan Baptiste de Jonghe was a painter, draughtsman, etcher and lithographer. He was specialised in landscapes and city views. His output was relatively limited. As he rarely dated his works his chronology is sometimes difficult to determine.Dominique Vautier, in:''Om en rond het neoclassicisme in België 1770-1830'', Elsene, 1985, p. 308
In his earliest works, De Jonghe interpreted nature in an idyllic, sentimental way. His paintings were romantic composite landscapes, such as the ''Border of the forest near Brussels''. Initially he borrowed the formulas of 17th century Dutch landscape painting. The sky takes up a prominent place in his compositions as was the case in the work of Jan van Goyen. He had a preference for wooded landscapes and adopted the typical manner composition used by Jacob van Ruysdael with a path starting in the center of the first plane with some trees scattered on both sides. The mood is expressed through the sky, which is either calm, cloudy or stormy and the trees, which are either dying or in full bloom. There is also some body of water included either in the form of a pool, river or pond, at which wild or domesticated animals are drinking. He usually included few human figures in his compositions. For the staffage he often relied on other painters such as his friend and family member
Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven
Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven (9 June 1798 – 19 January 1881), a Belgian painter, was born at Warneton in West Flanders. He was a painter, a sculptor, an etcher, an engraver, and a lithographer of animals, animated landscapes, and portrait ...
.
Later, he tried to reproduce his subjects more realistically and broke with the traditions of the conventional landscape. In his ''Landscape in the environs of Tournai'' of 1836 (
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (french: Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, nl, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) are a group of art museums in Brussels, Belgium. They include six museums: the Oldmasters Mus ...
), the artist gave the horizon an important role as he opened up the space and the sky became the key element of the composition. This desire to open up the composition is a defining characteristic of his mature period.
De Jonghe never painted imaginary landscapes. He always painted real locations and the titles of his works often state where the landscape is located. Gradually some of his landscapes became more Romantic as he started to depict certain picturesque scenes in places such as the Ardennes. These works are more in line with artistic currents of the 19th century and were likely made at the end of his career.
During his tenure as an art professor at the Academy of Kortrijk he taught lithography. He published his teaching materials under the title ''Principes de paysages dessinés d’après nature et exécutés sur pierre'' ('Principles of landscapes drawn after nature and executed on stone') (Brussels, 1826). In this work he stressed the particular characteristics of different types of trees.Lut Pil, 1993, p. 158