Rue Nôtre-Dame, Paris

Jongkind's 1866 painting of the Rue Notre-Dame in Paris shows the Dutch-born painter as an observer of urban France — the narrow street running toward the cathedral on the Île de la Cité providing both a vertical architectural subject and a demonstration of his atmospheric approach to city light. By 1866 Jongkind was living in Paris in the circle of painters and writers who were beginning to think about what would become Impressionism, and his urban canvases contributed to the emerging interest in the city itself as a subject for serious painting. The Rue Notre-Dame's canyon of Haussmann-era and older buildings filtering light down to street level offered distinctive illumination conditions. Monet, who knew Jongkind well at this period, would treat similar Parisian street subjects in later years, and this canvas helps document the tradition from which those later works emerged.

Urban street painting required Jongkind to manage the complex light conditions of a narrow Paris street — high walls on either side creating shade with patches of sky-light at ground level. His brushwork in the architectural elements is relatively structured, with the sky glimpsed at the top of the composition handled more freely.