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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)