Houses on a Waterway near Crooswijk

The Crooswijk area east of Rotterdam's historic center was, by 1874 when Jongkind painted this canvas, a zone of transition between older residential fabric and the expanding industrial and port infrastructure that was transforming the city. Houses along one of the many Rotterdam waterways offered Jongkind a subject that combined the architectural character he often sought with the reflective water surfaces he treated throughout his career. This painting belongs to a group of his Dutch urban-waterway subjects that parallel his well-known French and Norman coastal and river scenes, showing that his atmospheric approach was consistent regardless of geography. The Rijksmuseum holds this work as part of its documentation of Jongkind's Dutch subjects, which remained important throughout his career even as he spent most of his working life in France.

The houses along the waterway are reflected in the canal below — Jongkind's characteristic device for doubling the architectural content while introducing the atmospheric dissolution that water reflection produces. His brushwork is looser in the water than in the architectural elements above, suggesting movement within the reflective surface.