James Tissot

James Tissot
Self-Portrait (1865), oil on canvas, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Born	Jacques Joseph Tissot 15 October 1836 Nantes, July Monarchy
Died	8 August 1902 (aged 65) Chenecey-Buillon, French Third Republic
Other names	James Tissot
Occupation(s)	painter, illustrator, artist

Jacques Joseph Tissot (French: [tiso]; 15 October 1836 – 8 August 1902), anglicized as James Tissot (/ˈtɪsoʊ/), was a French painter and illustrator. He was a successful painter of fashionable, modern scenes and society life in Paris before moving to London in 1871. A friend and mentor of the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, Tissot also painted scenes and figures from the Bible.

Early life

Jacques Tissot was born in the city of Nantes in France and spent his early childhood there. His father, Marcel Théodore Tissot, was a successful drapery merchant. His mother, Marie Durand, assisted her husband in the family business and designed hats. A devout Catholic, Tissot's mother instilled pious devotion in the future artist from a very young age. Tissot's youth spent in Nantes likely contributed to his frequent depiction of shipping vessels and boats in his later works. The involvement of his parents in the fashion industry is believed to have been an influence on his painting style, as he depicted women's clothing in fine detail. By the time Tissot was 17, he knew he wanted to pursue painting as a career. His father opposed this, preferring his son to follow a business profession, but the young Tissot gained his mother's support for his chosen vocation. Around this time, he began using the given name of James. By 1854 he was commonly known as James Tissot; he may have adopted it because of his increasing interest in everything English.

Early career

The Circle of the Rue Royale, a scene in Paris seen from the balcony of the Hôtel de Coislin overlooking the Place de la Concorde, 1868

In 1856 or 1857, Tissot travelled to Paris to pursue an education in art. While staying with a friend of his mother, painter Jules-Élie Delaunay, Tissot enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study in the studios of Hippolyte Flandrin and Louis Lamothe. Both were successful Lyonnaise painters who moved to Paris to study under Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Lamothe provided the majority of Tissot's studio education, and the young artist studied on his own by copying works at the Louvre, as did most other artists of the time in their early years. Around this time, Tissot also made the acquaintance of the American James McNeill Whistler, and French painters Edgar Degas (who had also been a student of Lamothe and a friend of Delaunay), and Édouard Manet.

In 1859, Tissot exhibited in the Paris Salon for the first time. He showed five paintings of scenes from the Middle Ages, many depicting scenes from Goethe's Faust. These works show the influence in his work of the Belgian painter Henri Leys (Jan August Hendrik Leys), whom Tissot had met in Antwerp earlier that same year. Other influences include the works of the German painters Peter von Cornelius and Moritz Retzsch. After Tissot had first exhibited at the Salon and before he had been awarded a medal, the French government paid 5,000 francs for his depiction of The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite in 1860, with the painting being exhibited at the Salon the following year, together with a portrait and other paintings.

Mature career

Portrait of James Tissot by Edgar Degas, c. 1866–67

Émile Péreire supplied Tissot's painting Walk in the Snow for the 1862 international exhibition in London; the next year three paintings by Tissot were displayed at the London gallery of Ernest Gambart.

Un Dejeuner, c. 1868

In about 1863, Tissot suddenly shifted his focus from the medieval style to the depiction of modern life through portraits. During this period, Tissot gained high critical acclaim, and quickly became a success as an artist. Like contemporaries such as Alfred Stevens and Claude Monet, Tissot also explored Japonisme, including Japanese objects and costumes in his pictures and expressing style influence. Degas painted a portrait of Tissot from these years (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), in which he is sitting below a Japanese screen hanging on the wall.

Tissot fought in the Franco-Prussian War as part of the improvised defence of Paris, joining two companies of the Garde Nationale and later as part of the Paris Commune. His 1870 painting La Partie Carrée (The Foursome) evoked the period of the French revolution. Either because of the radical political associations related to the Paris Commune (which he was believed to have joined mostly to protect his own belongings rather than for shared ideology), or because of better opportunities, he left Paris for London in 1871. During this period, Seymour Haden helped him to learn etching techniques. Having already worked as a caricaturist for Thomas Gibson Bowles, the owner of the magazine Vanity Fair, as well as exhibited at the Royal Academy, Tissot arrived with established social and artistic connections in London. Tissot used the name Coïdé in Vanity Fair from 1869 to 1873.

Tissot quickly developed his reputation as a painter of elegantly dressed women shown in scenes of fashionable life. By 1872 Tissot had bought a house in St John's Wood, an area of London very popular with artists at the time. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, "in 1874 Edmond de Goncourt wrote sarcastically that he had 'a studio with a waiting room where, at all times, there is iced champagne at the disposal of visitors'".

He gained membership of The Arts Club in 1873.

Paintings by Tissot appealed greatly to wealthy British industrialists during the second half of the 19th century. During 1872 he earned 94,515 francs, an income normally only enjoyed by those in the echelons of the upper classes.

In 1874, Degas asked him to join them in the first exhibition organized by the artists who became known as the Impressionists, but Tissot refused. He continued to be close to these artists, however. Berthe Morisot visited him in London in 1874, and he travelled to Venice with Édouard Manet at about the same time. He regularly saw Whistler, who influenced Tissot's Thames river scenes.

In 1875 or 1876, Tissot met Kathleen Newton, a divorcee who became the painter's companion and frequent model. He composed an etching of her in 1876 entitled Portrait of Mrs N., more commonly titled La frileuse. She gave birth to a son, Cecil George Newton in 1876, who is believed to be Tissot's son. She moved into Tissot's household in St. John's Wood in 1876 and lived with him until her death in the late stages of consumption in 1882. Tissot frequently referred to these years with Newton as the happiest of his life, a time when he was able to live out his dream of a family life.

After Kathleen Newton's death, Tissot returned to Paris. A major exhibition of his work took place in 1885 at the Galerie Sedelmeyer, where he showed 15 large paintings in a series called La Femme à Paris. Unlike the genre scenes of fashionable women he painted in London, these paintings represent different types and classes of women, shown in professional and social scenes. The works also show the widespread influence of Japanese prints, as he used unexpected angles and framing from that tradition. He created a monumental context in the size of the canvases. Tissot was among many Western artists and designers influenced at the time by Japanese art, fashion and aesthetics.

Late career

Tissot in 1898 (detail of a self-portrait on silk)

In 1885, Tissot had a revival of his Catholic faith, which led him to spend the rest of his life making paintings about biblical events. Many of his artist friends were skeptical about his conversion, which coincided with the French Catholic revival, a reaction against the secular attitude of the French Third Republic. Moving away from the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, who aimed to create art that reflected a changing, modern world, Tissot returned to traditional, representational styles and narratives in his watercolors. To assist in his completion of biblical illustrations, Tissot traveled to the Middle East in 1886, 1889, and 1896 to make studies of the landscape and people. His series of 365 gouache illustrations showing the life of Christ were shown to critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences in Paris (1894–1895), London (1896) and New York (1898–1899), before being bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. They were published in a French edition in 1896–1897 and in an English one in 1897–1898, bringing Tissot vast wealth and fame. During July 1894, Tissot was awarded the Legion of Honour, France's most prestigious medal.

Tissot spent the last years of his life working on paintings of subjects from the Old Testament. Although he never completed the series, he exhibited 80 of these paintings in Paris in 1901 and engravings after them were published in 1904.

• The Life of Christ
• 
  Saint Joseph Seeks a Lodging in Bethlehem
• 
  Jesus Found in the Temple
• 
  The Baptism of Jesus
• 
  Jesus Wept
• 
  Our Lord Jesus Christ
• 
  Crucifixion, seen from the Cross
• 
  The Resurrection

• Subjects from the Old Testament
• 
  The Creation, Jewish Museum (New York), 1896 and 1902
• 
  Adam and Eve Driven From Paradise, between 1896 and 1902
• 
  The Ark Passes Over the Jordan, between 1896 and 1902
• 
  Moses, watercolor circa 1896–1902
• 
  The Seven Trumpets of Jericho, 1896 and 1902

Death and legacy

Tissot died suddenly in Doubs, France, on 8 August 1902, while living in the Château de Buillon, a former abbey which he had inherited from his father in 1888. His grave is in the chapel sited within the grounds of the chateau. Widespread use of his illustrations in literature and slides continued after his death with The Life of Christ and The Old Testament becoming the "definitive Bible images". In 1906, filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché used the Tissot Bible as reference material for her largest production at Gaumont to date, The Passion, creating twenty-five episodes, with approximately three hundred extras. His images provided a foundation for contemporary films such as the design for the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and lifestyle themes in The Age of Innocence (1993). In the first half of the 20th century, there was a re-kindling of interest in his portraits of fashionable ladies and some fifty years later, these were achieving record prices.

Gallery

• 
  La Japonaise au bain, 1864
• 
  The Thames, 1867
• 
  The Fireplace, 1869
• 
  Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects, 1869
• 
  At the Rifle Range, 1869
• 
  Jeune femme à l’éventail, 1870
• 
  Captain Frederick Gustavus Burnaby, 1870
• 
  La partie carrée, 1870
• 
  Young Lady in a Boat, 1870
• 
  Gentleman in a Railway Carriage, 1872
• 
  Bad News, 1872
• 
  An Interesting Story, circa 1872
• 
  The Tedious Story, circa 1872
• 
  The Captain's Daughter, 1873
• 
  Boarding the Yacht, 1873
• 
  Still on Top, 1873
• 
  Ball on Shipboard, 1874
• 
  Chrysanthemums, 1875
• 
  Lilacs, 1875
• 
  A Passing Storm, 1876
• 
  Holyday, 1876
• 
  The Widower, 1876
• 
  A Convalescent, circa 1876
• 
  The Gallery of H.M.S. 'Calcutta' (Portsmouth), 1877
• 
  Hide and Seek, 1877
• 
  October, 1877
• 
  Mavourneen, 1877
• 
  The Ball, 1878
• 
  Seaside, 1878
• 
  Kathleen Newton in an Armchair, 1878
• 
  In Full Sunlight, circa 1881
• 
  On the Thames, 1882
• 
  The Garden Bench, 1882
• 
  La demoiselle de magasin, 1878–1885
• 
  The Bridesmaid, 1883–1885
• 
  Women of Paris – The Circus Lover, 1885
• 
  A Woman of Ambition, 1885
• 
  In the Conservatory

See also

• List of Orientalist artists
• Orientalism

References

General sources

• Biography of Tissot with recent information on Kathleen Newton
• Misfeldt, Willard E. "Tissot, James [Jacques-Joseph]" in Oxford Art Online.
• Wentworth, Michael. "James Tissot." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Print
• Wood, Christopher. "Tissot: Life and Work of Jacques Joseph Tissot 1836–1902." London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986. Print.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Tissot, James Joseph Jacques". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• 209 works by James Tissot at www.JamesTissot.org
• James Tissot: The Life Of Christ. Exhibition at Brooklyn Museum 2009
• Commentary on Tissot's etching of Kathleen Newton
• Commentary on a portrait of Mrs. Newton
• Zimmer, Bill (31 October 1999). "Art; Love and History, Lavishly Elegant". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 August 2008.
• Biblical art by James Tissot
• Degas: The Artist's Mind, exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art fully available online as PDF, which contains material on James Tissot (see index)