Yale Center for British Art

Creator:
Claude de Jongh, ca. 1600–1663, Dutch, active in Britain (1615, 1625, 1627, 1628)
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)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1973.1.31
Gallery Label:
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