Jongkind attended the Academy of Drawing at The Hague, where the painter Schelfout taught him how to paint landscapes in watercolours.
He visited France for the first time in 1846, when his drawing master gave him all introduction to Eugene Isabey, who took him to Brittany and Normandy. The next years he spent partly in Holland and partly in France, leading a disorderly and dissolute life until 1860. In that year he met Madame Fesser, and under her influence settled down for a time, and his art developed considerably. In 1862 he went to Le Havre, to Sainte-Adresse, and spent the summers of 1863, 1864 and 1865 at Honfleur. There he began painting out of doors, sketching in oils and watercolours with Boudin who had a considerable influence on his development. In return, Jongkind, who was by now painting exceptional watercolours with lively broken brushwork, very soon influenced Boudin as well as Claude Monet.  In 1873 Jongkind paid his first visit to the Dauphine and in 1878 went to live with the Fesser family at the Cote Saint-Andre, not far from Grenoble. He loved that part of France and remained there until his death, painting more in watercolour than in oils. His sketches along the banks of the Isere and his snow scenes are delightful. He used white body colour to obtain his effects, and he was one of the first artists-even before Monet and Sisley - to capture the iridescent mother-of-pearl effect of light on snow, and to extract from his whites subtle colours and tones. Unfortunately his last years were clouded by outbursts of violent insanity, due to a relapse of his alcoholism; finally on 27 January 1891 he had to be taken to an asylum at Grenoble, and died at the Cote Saint-Andre on 9 February. The Department of Drawings at the Louvre has a wry fine and representative collection of Jongkind's watercolours, which includes his Views of Dutch ports as well as several Seascapes painted in Normandy, at Honfleur and by the Seine estuary.

Based on Phaidon encyclopedia of Impressionism, Maurice Serullaz, Phaidon, 1978