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Born on 15 October 1836: Jacques~Joseph “James” Tissot,
French painter, printmaker, and enamellist, who died on 08 August 1902.
— He was born and grew up in Nantes, a port city which inspired his
later paintings set on board ship. He moved to Paris in 1856 and became
a student of Louis Lamothe and Hippolyte Flandrin. He made his Salon début
in 1859 and continued to exhibit there successfully until he went to London
in 1871. His early paintings exemplify Romantic obsessions with the Middle
Ages, while works such as the Meeting of Faust and Marguerite (1861)
and Marguerite
au Rampart (1861, 111x87cm) show the influence of the Belgian painter
Baron Henri Leys. In the mid-1860s Tissot abandoned these tendencies in
favor of contemporary subjects, sometimes with a humorous intent, as in
Two
Sisters (1864; 1107x716pix) and Beating
the Retreat in the Tuileries Gardens (1868). The painting Young
Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects (1869) testifies to his interest
in things Oriental, and Picnic (1869), in which he delved into
the period of the Directoire, is perhaps influenced by the Goncourt brothers.
Tissot re-created the atmosphere of the 1790s by dressing his characters
in historical costume.
— Tissot was born Jacques Joseph Tissot in Nantes, to a middle class
family. He initially studied art at Beaux-Arts in Paris. Tissot’s early
paintings are mainly historical, & heavily influenced by the Dutch School.
He came into contact with the Impressionists as a young man, and was leading
a fairly unadventurous life. This was changed totally by the Franco-Prussian
War of 1870. Following the crushing French defeat in this war, and the subsequent
fall of the Paris Commune, Tissot decided to move to London, which he did
in 1871. This move must have caused considerable problems in his life, and
the painter needed to earn some money quickly. Tissot started, therefore,
to paint accomplished highly finished pictures of London society ,and social
events, including the famous Too
Early (1873). These pictures had an immediate success with the
art viewing and buying public, but not with the critics.
Tissot’s succcess in London aroused considerable
jealousy amongst his Impressionist colleagues in France, where he was regarded
as a very minor figure. The critical hostility Tissot’s pictures met with,
is not easy for us to understand today. The main criticisms were that the
pictures were really only painted photographs, and they were vulgar. There
is some truth in the first case, though the paintings show dazzling technique,
and a dash of Gallic wit and sophistication, home grown English artists
were quite unable to match. In the second case the basis of the adverse
comment, was the class-consciousness of British society at that time. The
pictures were held to show shallow nouveau-riche society at it’s worst.
In 1876 an event occurred which changed Tissot’s
life. He met a young and attractive Irish divorcée, Kathleen Newton.
Kathleen had married an English army officer in India. She had formed an
adulterous relationship with another man, borne his child, and returned
home in disgrace, beyond the pale of polite society. Kathleen Newton became
Tissot’s mistress, and moved into his London home. This necessitated a radical
change in his lifestyle, as the sophisticated, well-dressed, and good-looking
painter had become a popular figure socially. Tissot withdrew from the social
round, living quietly at his Grove End home with Kathleen. They did, however,
entertain less conventional friends from the artistic community. Kathleen
Newton became Tissot’s muse, and appeared in many of his pictures. She was
in every sense the love of his life. Another attraction for Tissot was the
Port of London, and the river Thames. His paintings with the river as the
background have an evocative atmosphere missing in his other work. One can
almost smell the smoke, and hear the shouts of the dockers and watermen.
In 1882, Kathleen Newton died of consumption
at the age of twenty eight. Tissot never recovered from this tragedy, and
moved back to Paris within a week of her death .He was never again romantically
involved with woman. His house in London, was sold to Alma-Tadema. Initially
Tissot carried on painting society and genre pictures in Paris, but soon
gave this up, devoting the rest of his life to painting religious scenes.
He visited the Middle- East twice to find genuine backgrounds for his religious
paintings. In late life Tissot became increasingly interested in Spiritualism,
a vogue of the time, and of course his motivation for this interest is not
a mystery. Tissot died at Buillon on Friday the 8th August 1902. A great
artist, his beautiful fallen woman, and a tragic love story. It has everything!
In recent years Japanese and US collectors have fueled a vast increase in
the value of Tissot paintings. The critics remain hostile. Does it matter?
— LINKS
— Self
Portrait (1865, 50x30cm, half-size; or see it full
size)
— La
comtesse d’Yanville et ses quatre enfants (1895, 135x126cm;
980x910pix, 103kb — ZOOM IN
to 2000x1820pix, 357kb)
— On
the Thames: the Frightened Heron (1872, 93x60cm; main
detail without heron 869x1178pix, 157kb — ZOOM
TO FULL PICTURE 1876x1244pix, 331kb) _ When James Tissot
fled to England in 1871 as a political refugee following the Franco-Prussian
war, he discovered that English suspicion of French painting technique and
a preference for sentimental narrative would require him to adapt his work
for the British market. In this painting, one of his first English works,
Tissot created a successful amalgam of these two aesthetics by serving up
to British tastes his French technique wrapped in the sweet Victorian charm
of beautiful young women boating on the Thames. Also presented here is the
artist's full comprehension of the aesthetics of Japanese design in his
use of a high vantage point and the juxtaposition of two separate pictorial
elements in compressed space. Further the instantaneous realism and framing
of the composition also suggests the influence of photography.
— Journey
of the Magi (1894, 71x102cm; main detail 889x1168pix,
158kb — ZOOM
TO FULL PICTURE 1374x2000pix, 454kb) _ Tissot's reputation
has so firmly come to rest on the artist's depictions of the stylish leisured
class of the late-nineteenth century that the religious works of his late
career — illustrations of the life of Christ — are little known.
However, at the turn of the century, these biblical images were considered
his greatest achievement due, on one hand, to the popularity of images from
the near East and, on the other hand, to the sense of immediacy Tissot gave
to an age-old tale through uncompromising attention to detail. The Journey
of the Magi was created after the second of three trips that the artist
made to Palestine between 1886 and 1896 to gather sketches and photographs
of the people, costumes, topography, and light of the region.
— Ruth gleaning _ detail
(395x600pix, 84kb)
— 112
images at Webshots |
—
There is absolutely no truth to the story that his ghost haunted Heinz Company
executive meetings until they reluctantly agreed to gradually introduce
a whole palette of colors for their ketchup, so that kids could develop
their talents by playing with their food artistically, for example decorating
hamburgers not only in tomato red, but also in Blastin' Green, Funky Purple,
pink, orange, teal, Stellar Blue, etc., or any mixture thereof.
