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Creator:
Claude de Jongh, ca. 1600–1663
Title:
The Thames at Westminster Stairs
Date:
1631
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on panel
Dimensions:
18 1/4 x 31 1/2 inches (46.4 x 80 cm), Frame: 24 1/4 × 37 1/2 inches (61.6 × 95.3 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

signed and dated 1631

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1973.1.31
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1973.1.31FR
Subject Terms:
abbey | boat | buildings | chapel | church | cityscape | landscape | palace | people | reflection | river | tower (building division)
Associated Places:
City of Westminster | England | Europe | Lady chapel, Westminster Abbey | London | Palace of Westminster | St. Margaret, Westminster Abbey | St. Stephen's Chapel, Palace of Westminster | Thames | United Kingdom | Westminster | Westminster Abbey | Westminster Hall
Access:
Not on view
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:4984
Export:
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Claude de Jongh was a successful painter based in Utrecht who made several short visits to England, where the Dutch tradition of landscape painting was only beginning to become popular. Although de Jongh’s views of London were derived from drawings made on site, the paintings were made in his studio in Utrecht and may have been intended as much for the Dutch as the British market. This landscape depicts the Abbey and Royal Palace of Westminster, the latter being the home to the English Parliament in the seventeenth century. When de Jongh painted this view, Parliament had been dissolved and would not be recalled by Charles I for another nine years, by which time the relations between monarch and Parliament had deteriorated to the point of armed conflict.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016



This is a view of Westminster, looking across the River Thames from a vantage point at the top of a flight of steps on the south bank. The tall buildings are (from left to right): St. Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster, which was destroyed by fire in 1834; Westminster Hall; an unknown tower, no longer standing, in front of the "Lady Chapel," which contains the tomb of King Henry VII; and the tower of St. Margaret's, Westminster, in front of the north transept of Westminster Abbey itself. The boats and the low houses whose doors open out onto the river are reminders of the vital role played by the Thames in the seventeenth century, as a thoroughfare, market place, rubbish dump, and sewer.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005
De Jongh's atmospheric view of London looks across the river Thames from its south bank to Westminster. The buildings depicted, from left to right, are St. Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster (destroyed by fire in 1834), Westminster Hall, the tower of St. Margaret's in front of the north transept of Westminster Abbey, and the Abbey itself. The boats on the water and the low houses whose doors open on to the river are reminders of the crucial role the Thames played in seventeenth-century London life and commerce. The down-to-earth realism with which de Jongh depicts the dwellings and topography in this painting attests to his awareness of new stylistic developments among his contemporary Dutch landscape painters, especially Jan van Goyen. Yet his attention to detail and perspective camouflages the liberties he has taken with the actual appearance of the place. The painting closely relates to two drawings (Royal Collection), made during his English visit of 1627, that record the scene more or less accurately. In the painted view, however, de Jongh has deliberately altered the topography of the place to create a more compelling composition: the small, tumbledown dwellings on the river contrast with the majesty of the religious buildings beyond, especially the Abbey and St. Stephen's Chapel. Light filters through the gray clouds, mirrored in the river's water, and bathes the blond stones of the buildings in warmth. The varied textures of paint over the surface of the panel-pulled thinly across the water and dabbed thickly in the stonework of the buildings-impart a jewel-like sparkle thatis characteristic of London's river atmosphere.

De Jongh, a Dutchman, never lived in England, although-from drawings of English topography dated 1615, 1625, 1627, and 1628-it is apparent that he made frequent visits. Since there is no evidence of his having returned to England in the 1630s, and since his paintings of English subjects date almost exclusively from this decade, he must have executed them, using the drawings he made during his English sojourns as preparatory sketches, in his studios in Haarlem and Utrecht.

Although steeped in the conventions and traditions of Dutch landscape painting, de Jongh was at his best painting views of England. His are the first in a long line of paintings in which successive generations of artists respond to England's rolling, verdant countryside and note with fascination the interdependency of town and river. In his Thames at Westminster Stairs he captures the symbiotic junction of land, water, and society in early modern England-city, men, and pastures alike seem to rise out of the Thames.

Julia Marciari-Alexander

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 28-29, no. 3, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 130-131, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Richard T. Godfrey, Wenceslaus Hollar, a Bohemian artist in England , Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994, p. 63, no. 29, NJ18 H73 G63 1994 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

John T. Hayes, Claude de Jongh, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 98,no.634, January 1956, pp. 3-11, fig. 14, N1 B87 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 28-29, no. 3, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Sarah ( Sarah Helen ) Monks, The Visual Economies of the Downriver Thames in Eighteenth-Century British Art, Visual Culture in Britain, vol. 7, Summer 2006, pp. 1, 16, fn 3, N6761 V57 (YCBA) Also available on line : Art Source [YCBA]

Painting in England 1630-1870, June 5th - July 13, 1973 , Thos. Agnew and Sons Ltd., June 5 1973 -July 13, 1973, [pp. 2-3], no. 2, Dealer Catalogues [ORBIS]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v.3, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Ian Tyers, The tree-ring analysis of 23 panel paintings from the Yale Center for British Art , New Haven : dendrochronological consultancy report 470, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2011, pp. 15, 16, 86-88, fig. 55, CC78.3 .T94 2011 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Ellis Waterhouse, The Dictionary of 16th & 17th Century British Painters, Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1988, p. 147, ND464 W38 1988 (LC) (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christopher White, The Dutch and Flemish drawings of the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [England] New York, 1994, p. 259, fig. 27, NC258 W48 1994 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale Center for British Art, Selected paintings, drawings & books, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1977, p. 3, N590.2 A82 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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