Johan Jongkind

"What I have suffered is unbelievable.. .I was given nothing [for his paintings in the Salon of 1855], not even a honorable mention."

"My specialty is really painting moonlight – but I will not forget the sunshine."

"I miss my friends in Paris. Holland is fine to paint, but Paris is the only place to follow ones studies. One can find judges there who will encourage you, who wil tell one what is necessary and what is missing. My great hope is to return as soon as the weather and luck are on my side for he journey."

"You know that the only marine painter that we have, Jongkind, is dead to art. He is completely mad."

"Jongkinds craft hardly concerns him; and this results in the fact that, before his canvases, it does not concern you either. The sketch finished, the painting completed, you do not trouble yourself with the execution, it disappears before the power of the charm of the effect.."

"He works himself up into a frenzy, on order to make great strides, before returning to Paris."

"One must be particularly knowledgeable in order to render the sky and the land with this apparent disorder, here [in Jongkinds art, showed at the Salon of 1868] everything is true (French: vrai)."

"There at the moment in Honfleur.. ..Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously.. .Theres lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful.."

"With him [Jongkind] all lies in impression."

"..in 1863 [Jongkind] begins the most beautiful series of watercolors that exists in the world."

"Jongkind is beginning to make us digest a kind of painting of which the hard outer skin hides an excellent and most tasty fruit. I too have profited by coming in the door which he already had forced, and I have begun, albeit timidly, tp present my seascapes.. ..the longer one looks at his watercolors, the more one wonders how he does them! They are made from nothing and yet the fluidity and the density of the sky and clouds are reproduced with unbelievable precision.. ..Nothing alters him, success, honours, fortunes, attacks or disdain. He sizes men up for himself; he knows that the disdained Corot is the master of landscape, that the insulted Monet will soon be the glory of his age; he knows how to assess the weakness in the art of Isabey or Troyon."

"[Jongkind].. ..his painting was too new and far too artistic to be appreciated in 1862 at his prices. Moreover, no one was as bad at making himself valued, as he was. He was a straight-forward and simple kind of man, who could hardly speak bad French and was very shy. But he was very outgoing that day [in 1864, somewhere around [[w:Le Havre| Le Havre] ]. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained the whys and wherefores underlining his work and thereby, completed the training that I had already received from Boudin. He became from this moment my true master and it [is] to him, that I owe the definitive training of my eyes."