The Hammock

Since 2000, museums have acquired seven more oil paintings by James Tissot. As of January, 2015, there now are seventy-eight oil paintings by James Tissot in public art collections worldwide: twenty-three in the U.K., two in the Republic of Ireland, seventeen in France, twenty-four in the U.S. and one in Puerto Rico, six in Canada, one in India, two in New Zealand, and two in Australia.

View of the Garden at 17 Grove End Road (c. 1882), by James Tissot. Ooil on canvas, 27 by 21 cm. Geffrye Museum of the Home, London. Courtesy www.jamestissot.org

View of the Garden at 17 Grove End Road (c. 1882), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 27 by 21 cm. Geffrye Museum of the Home, London. Courtesy http://www.jamestissot.org

Previously in a private collection, Tissot’s View of the Garden at 17 Grove End Road (c. 1882) was sold to Agnew’s by Sotheby’s, London in 2000 for $14,215 USD/£ 10,000 GBP (Hammer price). In 2004, the Geffrye Museum of the Home in London purchased the painting from Agnew’s for £21,000, with assistance from The Art Fund, the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and The Friends of the Geffrye Museum. View of the Garden at 17 Grove End Road was exhibited at the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, in J J Tissot and his London Circle, October 2002 through January 2003, and at the Geffrye Museum in Home and Garden Part Two, 1830-1914, March 9 to July 18, 2004. The painting is on exhibit in the Geffrye’s permanent display of eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings of domestic spaces in the Reading Room.

En plein soleil (In the Sunshine, c. 1881), by James Tissot. Oil on wood, 9 3/4 by 13 7/8 in. (24.8 by 35.2 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

En plein soleil (c. 1881), which depicts Tissot’s young mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854–1882) in the lower left hand corner, was painted in the garden of his large home at 44, Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood, London. En plein soleil was with Lenz Fine Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. until 1976, when it was sold to Williams and Son, London. That firm sold the painting to Stair Sainty Gallery, London, from which it was purchased in 1976 by the Marquess of Bristol, London. In 1983, the Marquess sold it back to Stair Sainty, where it was purchased that year by retired oil executive Charles B. Wrightsman (1895–1986) and his wife, the socialite, philanthropist and fine arts collector Mrs. Jayne Wrightsman (b. 1919), of New York. After Mr. Wrightsman’s death, Mrs. Wrightsman kept the picture until 2006, when she gifted it to the Met. It is not currently on view, but click this link to see an interactive image of it.

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The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their Children (1865), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 69 11/16 by 85 7/16 in. (177 by 217 cm). Musée d’Orsay, Paris. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In 1865, Tissot had found an entrée to the French aristocracy when he was commissioned to paint The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their children [René de Cassagne de Beaufort, marquis de Miramon (1835–1882), his wife, née Thérèse Feuillant (1836–1912), and their first two children, Geneviève and Léon, on the terrace of the château de Paulhac in Auvergne]. Tissot depicted them outdoors, as an informal, affectionate family. The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their children served as Tissot’s calling card to the lucrative market for Society portraiture when it was exhibited in Paris, at the Cercle de l’Union Artistique, in 1866. The portrait remained in the family until 2006, when it was acquired by the Musée d’Orsay; the first time it had been exhibited anywhere else since 1866 was with the blockbuster exhibition, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. Click this link to an interactive image for a closer look.

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Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née, Thérèse Feuillant (1866), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 50 1/2 by 30 3/8 in. (128.3 by 77.2 cm). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, California, acquired the stunning Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née, Thérèse Feuillant (1866) from the family in 2007. Thérèse-Stephanie-Sophie Feuillant (1836–1912) was from a wealthy bourgeois family. She inherited a fortune from her father, and in 1860, she married Réne de Cassagnes de Beaufort, Marquis de Miramon. Tissot depicts the 30-year-old Marquise in her husband’s castle, the château de Paulhac in Auvergne, wearing a pink velvet peignoir and leaning on the mantel in her sitting room with a stylish Japanese screen behind her.

Alongside this portrait at the Getty is displayed a sample of the pink silk velvet used in the Marquise’s peignoir, produced with a modern aniline dye. Her descendants kept this piece of fabric, as well as the letter that Tissot wrote to her husband, who had commissioned the portrait, asking permission to display it at the 1867 Paris International Exhibition. Permission was granted, and this private image was seen by the public for the first time – the only time, until the Getty purchased it.

I saw this painting in May, 2013, when it was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. It’s gorgeous – the photograph doesn’t do it justice. It’s currently on view at the Getty, but if you can’t get there, click this link to an interactive image for a closer look.

Admiring a Portfolio (c. 1883, pastel on linen, 23½ by 29 in. (59.7 by 73.7 cm) features a woman who modelled for Tissot on other occasions, and this picture could have been a means of attracting new commissions. It was sold in Sevres, France, around 1900, then at Sotheby’s, London in 1994 to a private collector in California. In 2008, it was sold at Christies, New York for $104,500 to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, where it currently is on display behind the front desk in the lobby.

Spring Morning (c. 1875) oil on canvas, 22 by 16 3/4 in. (55.9 by 42.5 cm), was in the possession of Thomas McLean, London, until about 1901; at some point after that, it was with Goupil, London. It was sold by Sotheby’s Belgravia, London, in 1981, as Matinée de printemps, for £40,000 to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York. Mrs. Wrightsman gifted it to the Met in 2009. It is not currently on view, but click this link to see an interactive image of it.

In the Conservatory (The Rivals, c. 1875-1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 15 1/8 by 20 1/8 in. (38.4 by 51.1 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Incidentally, the Met owned a fourth Tissot oil painting, described as a “masterpiece:” In the Conservatory (Rivals), c. 1875. Mrs. Wrightsman gifted it to the Met in 2009, and it was not displayed; the last time it had been exhibited was in the U.K. in 1955. It was deaccessioned on October 28, 2013, at Christie’s, New York, where it sold for $2,045,000 USD/£ 1,270,817 GBP (price includes Buyer’s Premium). Read about this quick passage from museum storage to auction house at For sale: In the Conservatory (Rivals), c. 1875, by James Tissot.

The Circle of the Rue Royale (1868), by James Tissot. 68 7/8 by 110 5/8 in. (175 by 281 cm). Musée d’Orsay, Paris. (Photo credit: Wikimedia.org)

In 1868, most likely due to his portraits of the Marquis de Miramon and his wife and family in 1865 and 1866, Tissot was commissioned to paint the most lucrative and elaborate painting of his career, a group portrait of the twelve members of The Circle of the Rue Royale. Members of the exclusive club, founded in 1852, each paid Tissot a sitting fee of 1,000 francs. He portrayed them on a balcony of the Hôtel de Coislin overlooking the Place de la Concorde in Paris (if you look closely at the original painting, you can see the horse traffic through the balustrade). From left to right: Count Alfred de La Tour Maubourg (1834-1891), Marquis Alfred du Lau d’Allemans (1833-1919), Count Étienne de Ganay (1833-1903), Captain Coleraine Vansittart (1833-1886), Marquis René de Miramon (1835-1882), Count Julien de Rochechouart (1828-1897), Baron Rodolphe Hottinguer (1835-1920; he kept the painting according to the agreed-upon drawing of lots), Marquis Charles-Alexandre de Ganay (1803-1881), Baron Gaston de Saint-Maurice (1831-1905), Prince Edmond de Polignac (1834-1901), Marquis Gaston de Galliffet (1830-1909) and Charles Haas (1833-1902). The members decided who would own the painting through a drawing. The winner was Baron Hottinger, seated to the right of the sofa. The Musée d’Orsay acquired The Circle of the Rue Royale in 2011 from Baron Hottinguer’s descendants for about 4 million euros. It also was included with Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, and it drew crowds.

Which of Tissot’s other oil paintings, now in private hands, will be acquired by public collections in the future?

Tissot’s Young Ladies Admiring Japanese Objects (1869) has been on loan to the Getty Museum from a private collection since about 2012.

Juan Antonio Pérez Simón (b. 1941) is a Spanish telecommunications billionaire and naturalized Mexican citizen who has the largest private art collection in the world. He began collecting in his early 20s, and he now owns over 3,000 paintings representing artists from fourteenth-century Italy and the German Renaissance to El Greco, Rubens, Canaletto, Goya, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Dalí.

Many of the paintings normally hang in Pérez Simón’s six homes, but he plans to leave them to a museum to be built in Mexico City. His collection, also the largest private collection of Victorian art outside Great Britain, includes James Tissot’s Spring (c. 1878), another depiction of Kathleen Newton.

Award-winning musical theater composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) began to collect Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite paintings as he achieved success with his musicals, Evita (1976), Cats (1981), Phantom of the Opera (1986) and Sunset Boulevard (1993). His collection, now one of the world’s largest in private hands, includes several works by James Tissot from the artist’s London period, 1871-1882, all purchased in the 1990s. In fact, Lloyd Webber owns more Tissot oils than the Tate Gallery in London, and he has said, “I hope that after my death my family will be able to find a way to exhibit the best of my collection on a more permanent basis.”

We hope for a long life for Lord Lord-Webber, a smooth construction for Pérez Simón’s museum in Mexico City, an extended loan period for the Getty’s Young Ladies, and for many philanthropic art collectors to gift their Tissot oil paintings to museums around the world in the coming years.

Tissot in the U.S.: New York

For sale: In the Conservatory (Rivals), c. 1875, by James Tissot

James Tissot in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

Tissot in the new millenium: Museum Exhibitions

If you do not have a Kindle e-reader, you may download free Kindle reading apps for PCs, Smartphones, tablets, and the Kindle Cloud Reader to read The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot. Read reviews.

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RY

All auction prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/ £ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

Over sixty oil paintings by James Tissot have been sold at auction since 2000.

The record price for a Tissot oil (as well as a Victorian picture) was set in October, 1994, when British musical theater composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) purchased The Garden Bench (Le banc de jardin, c. 1882) from American millionaire Frederick Koch (b. 1933) for $ 4,800,000/£ 3,035,093 at Sotheby’s, New York. This was a favorite image of Tissot’s, depicting his happy half-dozen years with his young mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854–1882), and her children in the garden of his villa at 17 (now 44) Grove End Road, London; Tissot kept this painting all his life. Kathleen Newton died of tuberculosis on November 9, 1882. [See James Tissot’s garden idyll & Kathleen Newton’s death.]

Still on Top (c. 1874), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Since 2000, the highest price paid for a Tissot oil was $ 2,763,150/£ 1,500,000 for Preparing for the Gala (c. 1874-76, oil on canvas, 34 by 16 1/2 in./86.4 by 41.9 cm), which was sold at Christie’s, London in 2006. It is possibly the first of Tissot’s works painted in the extensive garden of his new home in Grove End Road in St. John’s Wood. It belonged to Lord Ghanely, and was with Leonard P. Lee by 1955, when it was exhibited in public (in Sheffield, England) for the first and only time. It then was with M. Newman Ltd., London before it was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, in 1996, for $1,650,000/£ 1,090,188.

Coincidentally, when Preparing for the Gala was sold in 2006, Tissot’s house was on the market for the first time in over fifty years (but the house and this painting were purchased by different buyers).

Still on Top (c. 1874), in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in New Zealand, is a slightly enlarged close-up of Preparing for the Gala. It depicts two women and an elderly male servant wearing a red liberty cap, a revolutionary symbol in France, and was painted only three years after Tissot had fled Paris – under some suspicion – during the French government’s suppression of the radical Paris Commune. The image is rather daring for an apparent French political refugee of the time, remaking his career in England.

Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects (c. 1869), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 24 by 19 in. (60.96 by 48.26 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects (c. 1869, oil on canvas, 24 by 19 in./60.96 by 48.26 cm) was sold in 2002 at Sotheby’s, New York for $ 270,000/£ 186,464. Tissot painted three versions of this subject in the same year, and one was gifted to the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, in 1984, the year it was sold at Sotheby’s, New York for $ 75,000/£ 62,945. The other, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1869, was in a private collection in Europe as of about 1900 and descended in the owner’s family until it was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, in 1999 for $ 2,100,000/£ 1,285,425. This version, known as Young Ladies Admiring Japanese Objects, has been on loan to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, since about 2012.

“Goodbye” – On the Mersey (c. 1881), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 33 by 21 in. (83.82 by 53.34 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

On February 19 and 20, 2003, The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art was sold at Christie’s, London. It was the first major sale of a collection of Victorian Art since the sale of the Koch collection in 1993. The collection, a comprehensive overview of Victorian art, included 361 works by Holman Hunt, Millais and Rossetti, as well as G.F. Watts, Albert Moore and James Tissot, some of which belonged to Queen Victoria. In 2001, the Forbes family had decided to auction off the bulk of its renowned collection of Victorian paintings, fourth largest in the world after the collections owned by the Tate, the Victoria and Albert, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Christopher (Kip) Forbes who, with the support of his father, Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990), had assembled the collection over a period of thirty years, said, “If I could have the money and not have to sell the paintings, I wouldn’t sell them.” But, he later added, “other than me, nobody else [in my family] was all that interested, and the market has been … pretty good for Victorian painting right now.” Tissot’s “Good bye” – On the Mersey (c. 1881), which Malcolm Forbes bought at Christie’s, London in 1970, was sold at the 2003 sale for $ 1,196,700/£ 750,000. [Incidentally, Andrew Lloyd Webber acquired the other known version of “Goodbye” – On the Mersey in 1997; this oil on panel version is smaller, measuring 34.2 by 22.8 cm.]

Spring (c. 1878), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 56 by 21 in. (142.24 by 53.34 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot’s Spring (c. 1878), which depicts Kathleen Newton, was sold at Christie’s, London in 2003 for $ 1,572,556/£ 920,000, and became part of the largest private art collection in the world, owned by Juan Antonio Pérez Simón (b. 1941). Pérez Simón, a Spanish telecommunications billionaire and naturalized Mexican citizen, owns over 3,000 paintings representing artists from fourteenth-century Italy and the German Renaissance to El Greco, Rubens, Canaletto, Goya, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Dalí. He plans to leave them to a museum to be built in Mexico City, but many of the paintings normally hang in his six homes.

Pérez Simón loans individual pieces to museums around the world but had not shown works from his collection together until the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid presented fifty-seven of his paintings, which traveled outside of Mexico for the first time, in From Cranach to Monet: Masterpieces from the Pérez Simón Collection, June 20 to September 10, 2006. Two rooms were dedicated to Victorian artists, whose work is not well represented in Spain, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Venus Verticordia and Tissot’s Spring.

Edmond J. Safra (1932–1999), a Lebanese-born banker, founded the Republic National Bank of New York, the Republic New York Corporation and the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation. In 1976, he married the former Lily Watkins (born 1934). She was the daughter of a British railway engineer and a Russian mother, and she grew up in Brazil, where her father made a fortune manufacturing railway carriages.

Study for ‘Le sphinx’, by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 44 by 27 in. (111.76 by 68.58 cm). Private Collection. Courtesy http://www.jamestissot.org

In 2005, Sotheby’s, New York sold works from the Collections of Lily and Edmond J. Safra, one of the greatest private collections assembled in the 20th century. It included more than 800 items from the Safra residences in London, Geneva, Paris and New York: French, Continental and English furniture, clocks, porcelain, paintings, carpets, Fabergé and Russian works of art. Tissot’s Study for “Le sphinx” (Woman in an Interior), sold for $ 650,000/£ 364,023. Tissot’s oil, Le sphinx, unlocated, was one of the fifteen large paintings in Tissot’s Femme à Paris series, 1883-85, and the Safras had acquired it from collectors Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, Toronto, at Sotheby’s, New York in 1993.

In 2011, Sotheby’s, New York offered more property from the Safra collections, including Tissot’s Sur la Tamise (Return From Henley), expected to bring $1.5 million to $2.5 million. The painting brought $ 370,000/£ 293,860 at Sotheby’s New York in 1985, when The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey sold it to benefit the acquisition fund, but it did not find a buyer at the 2011 sale. Neither did Tissot’s pastel portrait of the Princesse de Broglie, estimated at $500,000 to $700,000, which the Safras bought from Joey and Toby Tanenbaum at Sotheby’s, New York in 1989.

The Japanese Scroll (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 15.24 by 22.52 in. (38.70 by 57.20 cm). Private Collection. Courtesy, http://www.jamestissot.org

The Japanese Scroll (c. 1874), provides a glimpse of an interior from Tissot’s home in London, either 73 Springfield Road (now demolished), where he lived for a year from March 1872 to 1873, or the house he lived in from early 1873 to late 1882, in nearby Grove End Road. The Japanese Scroll belonged to Isaac Smith, J.P., Bradford, England and was sold as A Question of Colour by his executors at Christie’s, London, in 1911, to Gaunt. The painting later was with The Leicester Galleries, Ernest, Brown and Phillips, Ltd., London. In 1985, it was sold at Sotheby’s, London for $ 285,802/£ 220,000, and it then was with Paul Rosenberg, New York. In 2009, it was sold at Christie’s, New York for $722,500 /£ 446,787 (Premium).

Hélène Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord (1915–2003), Duchesse de Sagan, owned Tissot’s small picture, Femme en pied, vue de dos, which was sold at Sotheby’s, Paris in 2010 for € 17,500 EUR (Premium) [$ 23,835/£ 15,638]. Violette, whose mother was American heiress and socialite Anna Gould (1875 – 1961), the daughter of financier Jay Gould, married collector Gaston Palewski (1901–1984), the Chief of State under General de Gaulle from 1942 to 1946. (Palewski, by the way, was a notorious womanizer who had a long-term affair with British novelist Nancy Mitford.) The Tissot picture, formerly owned by pasta manufacturer and collector of French art Camille Groult (1837–1908,) was part of Palewski’s eclectic collection of art and furniture from his apartment in the rue Bonaparte in Paris.

The Morning Ride (c. 1880), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 26.26 by 38.35 in. (66.70 by 97.40 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Morning Ride (c. 1880) was with London art dealer Thomas McLean around 1898, when it was included in the 34th Exhibition. It then belonged to Hugo Hanak, a Czechoslovakian collector, and was sold at Parke Bernet, New York in 1944, to Jacques Helft [antiques dealer Jacques Helft (1891–1980), brother-in-law of art dealer Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959)]. By 1955–56, it was with the Weitzner Gallery, New York, and it was acquired by Mrs. Monique Uzielli (née de Gunzberg, 1913–2011), a Swiss aristocrat and art collector who resided in New York, around 1960. She lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Impressionist Epoch, December 12, 1974 to February 10, 1975 as well as to summer exhibitions from 1975–1993. It was sold from Mrs. Uzielli’s estate at Sotheby’s, New York in 2012 for $1,874,500/£ 1,160,681 (Premium).

Two notable sales occurred in 2013, and you can read about them in detail by clicking these links:

For sale: A Visit to the Yacht, c. 1873, by James Tissot

For sale: In the Conservatory (Rivals), c. 1875, by James Tissot

Tissot’s elegant painting of a woman in a rowboat, Waiting (c. 1873, also known as In the Shallows), was sold by the London dealer William Agnew to the German Jewish banker Emile Levita on January 23, 1874 for £800. But by February 17, Levita had changed his mind. [Interesting side note: Emile Levita, who came to Britain in the 1850s and obtained British citizenship in 1871, was the great-great grandfather of British Prime Minister David Cameron.] Tissot exhibited Waiting at the Royal Academy that year, along with The Ball on Shipboard (c.1874, Tate Britain) and London Visitors (c.1874, Toledo Museum of Art), and the returned picture immediately was bought by Manchester silk manufacturer James Houldsworth for 700 guineas. Waiting was sold at Christie’s June 17, 2014 sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art in London. Estimated at $849,500 – $1,359,200/£500,000 – £800,000, it actually sold for $1,635,288/£962,500 (Premium).

Rivals (1878 – 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 36.22 by 26.77 in. (92 by 68 cm). Private collection.

In October, 2014, Tissot’s The Rivals (I rivali, 1878–79) was sold at Casa d’Aste Pandolfini, Florence, Italy. Set in Tissot’s conservatory, it depicts Kathleen Newton cast as a young widow, crocheting while taking tea with two suitors, one middle-aged and one old. Tissot exhibited it with a number of other works at London’s Grosvenor Gallery in 1879, and that same year, it was shown at the Royal Manchester Institution’s Exhibition of Modern Paintings and Sculpture, priced at £400. It was purchased by John Polson, of Tranent and Thornly [who also owned Tissot’s A Portrait (1876, Tate, London)], and sold by his executors at Christie’s, London in 1911. It then belonged to Sir Edward James Harland (1831–1895), head of the Belfast shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff and sometime M.P. for North Belfast, of Glenfarne Hall, near Enniskillen, Ireland and Baroda House in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, where it was sold by his executors at Christie’s upon his widow’s death in 1912. It then was with the Ingegnoli Collection in Milan, where it was sold by Paul Ingegnoli’s executors at Galleria Pesaro in 1933 and purchased by a Milanese private collector. It was displayed in public again only in Milan, at the Palazzo della Permanente, La Mostra Nazionale di Pittura, “L’Arte e il Convito,” in 1957. At the 2014 sale, The Rivals was purchased for € 954,600 EUR (Premium) [$ 1,215,969/£ 753,715].

The Stars of Victorian Painting: Auction Prices

James Tissot in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

Tissot in the new millenium: Museum Exhibitions

Tissot in the new millenium: Museum Acquisitions

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RY

All auction prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/£ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

www.jamestissot.org, Self-Portrait-3 (as monk)

Self-portrait (c. 1859), by James Tissot. Courtesy http://www.jamestissot.org

James Tissot left Nantes, the seaport where he was born, to study art in Paris in 1856, shortly before he turned 20. The medieval architecture of Nantes, and of Brugelette, in Flanders, where he was educated at a Jesuit college, made such an impression on him that he had at first wished to become an architect.

In Paris, Tissot studied briefly at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1857. But he was impressed by the popular work of the Belgian painter Hendrik Leys (1815 – 1869). Leys’ painting, The Trental Mass of Berthal de Haze – replete with numerous characters enacting a historical drama against a detailed architectural background inspired by the early Flemish and German masters – won a gold medal at the 1855 Paris International Exhibition. In 1859, Tissot traveled to Antwerp and took lessons in Leys’ studio.

That year, at 23, Tissot also made his artistic debut at the Paris Salon, exhibiting five pieces including Promenade dans la neige (Walk in the Snow, 1858), which the artist had repeatedly scraped and reworked. Zacharie Astruc (1833 – 1907), a sculptor, painter and art critic, wondered if Tissot was amusing himself by placing student work in a frame and suggested he should have left Promenade dans la Neige in his studio. But this picture of a medieval couple taking a walk on a wooded hill overlooking a distant castle is alive in that it evokes the tense mood of the man and the woman, who have just quarreled.

In 1862, Tissot also displayed this painting at the London International Exhibition. Over six million visitors viewed works by 28,000 exhibitors from 36 countries – a range of wonders in the arts, industry and technology. Tissot gave his work the English title, A Walk in the Snow; by showing it in England, the young artist signaled his ambition and widened his reputation.

By 1874, Vincent van Gogh was aware of Promenade dans la neige and praised it, and Tissot, in a letter to his younger brother Theo, an art dealer. Much later, the painting found its way to Paul Touzet, a French dealer in Old Masters, and as of 1982, it was in a private collection in Paris.

The Dance of Death (1860), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 14 5/8 by 48 3/16 by 1 1/2 in. (37.1 by 122.4 by 3.8 cm). Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence. (Photo by Lucy Paquette)

As the Salon was held biennially after 1855, the next was in 1861.

The Dance of Death, or Voie des fleurs, voie des pleurs (Path of Flowers, Way of Tears, 1860), a medieval dance of death exhibited as one of six of Tissot’s paintings at the Salon in 1861, is currently on display high on the West Wall of the Grand Gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in Providence. It was the only one of Tissot’s early paintings to be admired by the critics, and Tissot offered it to a collector at what he claimed to consider a low price of 5,000 francs – a month’s income for a wealthy man at that time. The Dance of Death was in a private collection in Philadelphia until it was purchased from Julius Weitzner (1896 – 1986), an American dealer in Old Masters paintings, by the RISD in 1954. Tissot’s friend, Edgar Degas, made a sketch of this picture in one of his notebooks, and van Gogh also was familiar with this painting, as he mentioned it in an 1883 letter to his brother Theo.

An oil study for this picture, or an earlier version of it, Allegory of the transience of life (1859), was sold at Christie’s, London in 1972 for $ 2,850/£ 1,100.

Pendant l’office (During the Service, also called Martin Luther’s Doubts, 1860), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 35 by 27 in. (88.90 by 68.58 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

At the Salon in 1861, Tissot also exhibited Pendant l’office (During the Service, also called Martin Luther’s Doubts, 1860). He originally priced it at 9,000 francs. It was sold at Christie’s, New York in 1986 for $ 80,000/£ 52,756, then again at the same auction house in 1994 for $ 60,000/£ 40,677.

The Return of the Prodigal Son (1862), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 45 by 81 in. (114.30 by 205.74 cm). The Manney Collection, New York. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

At the Salon in 1863, Tissot exhibited three pictures including The Return of the Prodigal Son (1862) and Le départ du fiancé (The Departure of the Fiancé).

But the critics had had enough of Tissot’s medieval paintings and began to satirize him. One prominent French critic wrote of him and The Return of the Prodigal Son, “When he has done enough archaeology, we will do as the father of the prodigal child he showed this year: we will kill the fatted calf, and we will forgive him.”

Le départ du fiancé, unlocated, is known through a related preparatory study, c.1863, 6 by 11 in./15.24 by 27.94 cm). It was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 2002 from the estates of David M. Daniels and Stevan Beck Baloga, for $ 6,000/£ 3,849.

At the Salon in 1864, Tissot exhibited two modern paintings to great acclaim; he began to hit his stride as an artist. But he was not ready to give up his medieval subjects. Promenade sur les remparts (Walk on the ramparts, 1864, oil on board, 52 by 44.4 cm) was sold in 1875 for £ 315. In 1968, petroleum geologist Robert Sumpf (1917 – 1994) gifted it to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in California, where he had earned his B.S. in geology in 1941.

Tissot also exhibited work in London in 1864, choosing to show medieval pictures. He had two pictures on display at the Society of British Artists (The Elopement and The Return of the Prodigal Son), and at the Royal Academy Exhibition, an oil painting of another snowy scene called At the Break of Day. The Return of the Prodigal Son did not impress the critics in London. It was sold at Arnaune in 1980 for 195,000 FRF ($ 46,507/£ 20,386) and later at Christie’s, London in 1992 for $ 203,720/£ 110,000. It is now in the Manney Collection; Richard and Gloria Manney, who live in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, made their fortune in the media time-buying business and are well known for their generous patronage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tissot exhibited two paintings, including Tentative d’enlèvement (The Attempted Abduction), at the Salon in 1865. This picture was with Goupil in Paris until acquired by Knoedler in 1866, and then belonged to a private collector in New York, from whom it was acquired by Elliott L. Bloom (1930 – 2011). Bloom was the founder and owner of Elliott Galleries in New York, where he had worked as an art and antiques dealer for over fifty-five years. Tentative d’enlèvement was sold for $134,500/£ 83,281 (Premium) at Sotheby’s, New York in 2012.

By 1866, Tissot was regularly painting oil portraits of wealthy men and women, and earning commissions such as his Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née Thérèse Feuillant. At the Salon in 1866, Tissot exhibited two pictures of fashionable, modern women. Neither painting earned particular acclaim, but Tissot was elected hors concours – beyond the competition, or, in a class by himself: from now on, he could exhibit any painting he wished at the annual Salon, without submitting his work to the jury’s scrutiny. The price for his pictures skyrocketed. At 30, only ten years since his arrival in the capital, he decided to purchase property on the most prestigious new thoroughfare in Paris, the avenue de l’Impératrice (Empress Avenue, now avenue Foch). He would be living in grand style in his luxurious new villa by late 1867 or early 1868. Until then, he lived in the crowded, ancient rue Bonaparte and continued to paint medieval pictures.

L’embuscade (Tentative d’enlèvement)/The Ambush (The Attempted Abduction) [also referred to as L’enlèvement] (c. 1865-67), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 22.5 by 36.6 in. (57.2 by 93 cm). Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France.

L’embuscade (Tentative d’enlèvement)/The Ambush (The Attempted Abduction) [also referred to as L’enlèvement] (c. 1865-67) was sold in 1880 for £199 10 shillings. In 1974, it was acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes with the assistance of a grant from the Direction des Musées de France. It has been included in numerous exhibitions, most recently James Tissot et ses Maîtres, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, November 4, 2005 to January 5, 2006 and The 19th century Japan Project – The Flow from 19th century French Art to 20th century Modern Art, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Japan, August 25 to October 8, 2012; Akita Senshu Museum of Art, Japan, November 3 to December 16, 2012; Saga Prefectural Art Museum, Japan, January 25 to March 10, 2013; Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan, June 8 to July 7, 2013; Kagoshima City Museum of Art, Japan, July 19 to September 1, 2013.

Le rendez-vous (c. 1867), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 20 by 14 in. (50.80 by 35.56 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Tissot exhibited Le rendez-vous at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. It was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 2005 for $ 80,000/£ 41,677.

Le rendez-vous secret (c. 1865-67) was sold at Arcole, Paris in 1991 for 245,000 FRF ($ 42,483/£ 24,713. An oil on canvas, it measures 24 by 18 in. (60.96 by 45.72 cm) and remains in a private collection.

Tissot painted another medieval series, based on one of the greatest works of German literature, Goethe’s 1808 version of the legend of Faust. German Romanticism was popular at this time, and Tissot exhibited scenes from Faust concurrently with his other medieval pictures.

By 1867, or about the time he moved into his splendid new Parisian villa, he had moved on to scenes of modern life – bringing the same attention to detail, use of weather to create mood, and skill in rendering fashion and psychological tension. Even as he grew and prospered as an artist, he retained his defining interests and characteristic subject matter. He would go on to paint other versions of the prodigal son, couples after a quarrel, and contemporary updates of his early paintings, such as Le rendez-vous secret (c. 1890).

Le rendez-vous secret (c. 1890), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Becoming James: Tissot’s first Salon, 1859

Riding Coattails: Tissot’s earliest success, 1860 – 1861

Modern Painter: Tissot’s Focus Shifts, 1864

Ready and waiting: Tissot’s entrée, 1865

In a class by himself: Tissot beyond the competition, 1866

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RY

All auction prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/£ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

In Goethe’s 1808 version of the legend of Faust, one of the greatest works of German literature, Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles, the devil, in return for youth, knowledge and magical powers. Faust meets and seduces the beautiful and innocent Marguerite, who comes to an unhappy end.

The story was popular across Europe, especially in France. In 1827, the publisher and lithographer Charles Motte persuaded French romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798 –1863) to illustrate the first French edition of Goethe’s Faust.

Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (1846), by Ary Scheffer. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Ary Scheffer (1795 – 1858), a painter with Dutch origins who painted in France, enjoyed great success in Paris with his series of paintings based on scenes from Faust: Faust in his Study, Faust Doubting, Marguerite at the Spinning Wheel, Faust Holding the Cup, Marguerite at the Sabbat, Marguerite Leaving Church, Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (1846), and the most popular of all, Marguerite at the Fountain (1852).

Scheffer’s biographer wrote of the profound experience felt by readers of Goethe’s tragedy in verse, and its potential in the hands of an artist: “Profoundly as it explores the mysterious relations between the sensual and the intellectual natures of man, whilst exhibiting the varied workings of human passions and weakness, Faust deals likewise with the tragic element, in a way to touch the deepest chords of sympathy.”

In 1859, a year after Scheffer’s death, Tissot traveled to Antwerp, augmenting his art education by taking lessons in the studio of the Belgian painter Hendrik Leys (1815 – 1869). Leys’ painting, The Trental Mass of Berthal de Haze – replete with numerous characters enacting a historical drama against a detailed architectural background – won a gold medal at the 1855 Paris International Exhibition.

The Trental Mass of Berthal de Haze (1854), by Hendrik Leys. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Studying under Leys, who himself imitated painting styles he admired, Tissot’s work now began to combine academic technique with minute detail, historical accuracy and a dark paint surface.

In Paris, Charles Gounod’s grand opera version of Faust premiered at the Théatre-Lyrique on March 19, 1859.

In 1860, Tissot, as a cocky 24-year-old, priced Le Rencontre de Faust et de Marguerite (The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite, oil on panel, 78 by 117 cm) at 6,500 francs. Tissot and his picture attracted the attention of the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Director-General of Museums, who purchased the painting by an order of July 17, 1860 on behalf of the French government for the Luxembourg Museum for 5,000 francs. (The Luxembourg was founded in 1818 to display works by living artists, who could not be exhibited at the Louvre). Nieuwerkerke was the man to impress – thanks to his mistress, Princess Mathilde (the Emperor’s first cousin) he was in charge of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the Salon. Le Recontre de Faust et de Marguerite was exhibited at the Salon in 1861. It remained at the Luxembourg until 1907, when it was with the Minister of the Interior, Paris. From 1960 to 1982, it was with the City Hall at Le Chambon-Feugerolles, in central France. After 1982, the painting was assigned to the Musée d’Orsay, where it now is on display with others once exhibited at the Salon.

Faust and Marguerite, by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 6.10 by 8.66 in. (15.50 by 22.00 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Faust and Marguerite, a small study for The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite, was sold at auction at Koller, Zurich in 2012 for 6,000 CHF ($ 6,640/£ 4,159).

Faust et Marguerite au jardin (Faust and Marguerite in the Garden, 1861), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 25 by 35 in. (63.50 by 88.90 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Le Recontre de Faust et de Marguerite was one of six paintings Tissot had accepted for exhibition at the Salon in 1861. Two of the others also were based on Goethe’s Faust: Faust and Marguerite in the Garden, and Marguerite at the Service.

Tissot asked 5,000 francs for Faust et Marguerite au jardin (Faust and Marguerite in the Garden, 1861). In 1976, it was sold at Christie’s, London for $ 10,123/£ 5,000; as of 1986, it was in the collection of David Rust (1930 – 2011), Washington, D.C. Rust, a collector, curator and connoisseur, worked for two decades as Chief Curator of European Art at the National Gallery.

Tissot painted four very different versions of Marguerite à l’église (Marguerite in Church), which over the years have been labeled with a confusing array of similar names, all portraying Marguerite after she has been abandoned by Faust.

The Paris art gallery, Goupil & Co., acquired the first version of Marguerite à l’église (1860, oil on panel, 27 by 36 in./68.58 by 91.44 cm) from Tissot that year and exhibited it in 1861. At Goupil’s London branch in 1875, the firm began holding regular exhibitions of European paintings. In 1879, Goupil sold Tissot’s Marguerite à l’église for 300 guineas to Henry Martin Gibbs (1850 – 1928), who in 1917 bought Sheldon Manor, just west of Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, as a home for his eldest son, William Otter Gibbs (1883 – 1960), after his marriage in 1915. The painting remained at Barrow Court, Henry Martin Gibbs’ Jacobean manor house in Somerset, until 1947 and after 1960 at Sheldon Manor. Sheldon, primarily built in the sixteenth century, was a perfect setting for Marguerite à l’église. Tissot’s picture was included in major exhibitions in the U.K. from November 1984 to June 1985 and Washington D.C. from November 1985 to March 1986. Martin Antony Gibbs, the grandson of the man who had bought Sheldon, died in 1995. After Marguerite à l’église was exhibited at London’s Royal Academy, with “Art Treasures of England,” January to April 1998, it was sold in late June of that year at Christie’s, London for $ 81,898/£ 49,000. In 2007, Marguerite à l’église again was sold at Christie’s, London, this time for $ 139,965/£ 70,000.

Marguerite in Church (c. 1861), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 50 by 75 cm. The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Marguerite in Church (c. 1861), another version of Marguerite à l’église, was presented to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin by American-born international mining magnate Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875 – 1968) in 1950. This version was exhibited at the Salon in 1861 as Marguerite à l’office (Marguerite at the Service, or Marguerite at Mass).

Charles Gounod’s Faust was revived in Paris in 1862, and it was performed in London at Covent Garden in 1864, with Mephistopheles played by celebrated French baritone (and art collector) Jean-Baptiste Faure.

At the Hermitage Museum in Norfolk, Virginia with Marguerite in Church (1865), by James Tissot.

Tissot exhibited Marguerite in Church (1865, oil on panel) at the Salon in 1866 as Jeune femme dans une église (Young Woman in a Church). It was purchased at Christie’s, London, in 1927 without a frame, as a gift for Florence Sloane, the wife of William Sloane. William and Florence were from wealthy families in New York; Sloane came to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1887 to work in his uncle’s knitting mills, and the couple married in 1893. After his uncle died, Sloane took over three mills, renamed the business William Sloane & Co. and acquired Tidewater Knitting Mill in Portsmouth, Virginia. In 1908, the Sloanes built an Arts and Crafts style house on the shore of the Lafayette River in Norfolk and called it The Hermitage.

Marguerite (1858), by William Wetmore Story. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. (Photo: Lucy Paquette)

During World War I, William Sloane’s mills turned out thousands of pairs of fleece-lined long underwear for the Army and Navy while Florence volunteered as postmistress, sewed for the Red Cross, helped at the local hospitals and entertained American, Australian and English troops on the lawn and gardens of her home with cookouts, games and music on summer weekends from 1914 to 1918. The Sloanes entertained as many as 1,800 at a time.

Mrs. Sloane helped secure the land for what would become the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, which began as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences 1926. William Sloane was its first president, and Florence Sloane its first director. Even so, Florence traveled to Europe and built an extensive art collection of her own, which was opened to the public in 1942. You can see James Tissot’s Marguerite in Church – now framed – at The Hermitage Museum and Gardens.

And nearby, at the Chrysler Museum, you can see a marble sculpture of Marguerite!

Marguerite au rampart (Marguerite by the Rampart, 1861), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 43 by 34 in. (109.22 by 86.36 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Marguerite au rempart (Marguerite by the Rampart, 1861) was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 1989 for $ 210,000/£ 133,945. A few years later, in 1994, it again was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, this time for just $ 120,000/£ 75,877. Note that Marguerite’s pose is identical to that in the National Gallery of Ireland’s Marguerite in Church (c. 1861), above, and that her costume is nearly identical.

Another painting in Tissot’s series, Marguerite à la fontaine (Marguerite at the Well, 1861, oil on canvas, 50 by 40 in./127 by 101.6 cm) was last sold at Sotheby’s, London in 1959 for $ 1,819/£ 650. As of 1986, it was in the collection of Dr. Arthur C. Herrington, Washington, D.C. His father was Arthur W. S. Herrington (1891 –1970), founder of the Marmon- Herrington vehicle manufacturing company in Indianapolis, Indiana, who designed the Jeep and other light trucks for military use, then trolleys and buses. Dr. Arthur Herrington’s mother, Nell Clarke Herrington, was a pioneer and leader in Indianapolis cultural development and owner of an impressive art collection.

Other paintings in Tissot’s Faust series known from his photographic record remain unlocated, such as the fourth version of Marguerite in Church, showing her in front of a carved choir screen and called Marguerite à l’office (c. 1861), and Marguerite in a Staircase.

Incidentally, a contemporary critic complained that Tissot had not bothered to read Faust, without suggesting how the artist might have portrayed these scenes differently, if he had. But Tissot surely must have enjoyed the fact that the Goupil gallery, with photographer Robert Jefferson Bingham (1824 or 1825 – 1870), published photographic prints of five of the young artist’s Faust paintings in 1860-61, and these prints sold across Europe and America.

James Tissot’s Medieval Paintings, 1858-67

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RY

All auction prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/£ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

In 1868, Tissot began painting light-hearted, sexually suggestive pictures, which would have been shocking in a contemporary context.

He began his career as a young artist in Paris by exhibiting medieval scenes, and then scenes of sin and guilt from Goethe’s Faust, until the critics had had enough of his archaic pictures. [See James Tissot’s Medieval Paintings, 1858-67 and James Tissot’s Faust series, 1860-65.]

James Tissot (1868), by Edgar Degas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

At the Salon in 1864, Tissot exhibited his first paintings of self-confident, modern woman, Portrait of Mlle. L.L. and The Two Sisters. Both were highly original, praised by the critics and popular with the public.

But as late as 1866, he continued to exhibit a Faust-themed painting at the Salon. That year – at age 30 — he was made hors concours, thus gaining the privilege of exhibiting anything he wished in the future, without first submitting his work to the jury.

One critic at the time observed that Tissot was dapper and personable, but thought him a little pretentious and a less-than-great artist “because he did what he wanted to do and as he wished to do it.” Tissot, having made his own way to the top of his profession, probably was a little smug in his success.

Now busy with commissions from his aristocratic patrons, he did not need to kowtow to the critics. He began a new series of period paintings with a racy edge in 1868, setting them in the years of the French Directory (1795 to 1799) as if they depicted behaviors of a bygone time – the hedonistic years after the Reign of Terror.

In these period costume pieces, Tissot captured something of the current mood in Paris – giddy with new wealth and the delights of the leisure it brought. [See Paris c. 1865: The Giddy Life of Second Empire France.]

One of these paintings is in a public gallery in India, and another at the British Embassy in Paris as part of the U.K. Government Art Collection, while the rest remain in private collections.

Un dejeuner (A Luncheon, c.1868), by Tissot. Oil on canvas, 78.7x58.4 cm; Roy Miles Fine Paintings. Photo courtesy of Bridgeman Art

Un déjeuner (A Luncheon, c.1868), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Roy Miles Fine Paintings. Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in “The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot,” by Lucy Paquette © 2012

Tissot exhibited Un déjeuner (oil on canvas, 78.74 by 58.42 cm) at the Salon in 1868. As of 1984, it was in the collection of Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol (1915 – 1985), who in his youth was called “Mayfair’s Number One Playboy,” then went bankrupt and became a notorious jewelry thief. Some time after being sentenced, at age 23, to three years’ hard labor, he became a patron of the arts and an authority on Lawrence Alma-Tadema and James Tissot. The Marquess owned another Tissot painting, En plein soleil (c. 1881, Metropolitan Museum, NY), which he purchased in 1976 from Stair Sainty Gallery, London, and then sold back in 1983. After the death of his ruined eldest son, John Hervey, 7th Marquess of Bristol (1954 – 1999), Un déjeuner was offered for sale at Sotheby’s, New York in 2000.

A smaller replica (oil on panel, 22 by 16.5 in./55.9 by 41.9 cm) was with Roy Miles Fine Paintings, London, then Kurt. E. Schon Ltd, New Orleans. It was sold at Christie’s, London in 2007, by a collector in Texas.

In the considerably more tense scene, The tryst (c. 1869, oil on canvas, 29 by 21 in./73.66 by 53.34 cm), a woman and man are seated on a curved stone bench within a short lattice enclosure, a pug dog at their feet, in a wooded background. The Tryst was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 1982 for $ 36,000/£ 21,452.

In Tryst at a Riverside Café (c. 1869, oil on canvas, 16 by 21 1/8 in./40.64 by 53.66 cm), the man wears the same costume that Tissot used in Un déjeuner and The Tryst. The woman wears the same hat, and she has the pug dog on her lap. Tryst at a Riverside Café was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 1989 for $ 450,000/£ 287,026, and it later belonged to Ronald Lewis. In 2005, the property of the late Sir Arthur Gilbert, it was sold at Christie’s, New York to benefit the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House in London.

Arthur Gilbert (1913 – 2001) was born Arthur Bernstein, to Polish Jews who moved to Golders Green, in north London, where Arthur’s father was a furrier. At 21, Arthur married Rosalinde Gilbert, a struggling designer of evening gowns; he took her surname and marketed her work. They did so well for themselves that they retired in 1949 and moved to California. There, Arthur bought and developed industrial property. In 1961, he bought a three-acre plot in Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills and built a neo-classical home with black marble steps and Corinthian columns. Over the next thirty years, Gilbert spent some £30 million on works of art. He kept some at his home and the rest in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After giving the British his large collection of silver, gold and enamel objets d’art, worth an estimated £75 million, in 1996, he was knighted in 1999 [his collection originally was housed at Somerset House, but is now at the Victoria & Albert Museum]. Arthur Gilbert invested only in the finest pieces, saying, “If you buy quality you sell quality, even in a depression.” He owned another of Tissot’s Directoire paintings, described below.

Unaccepted (1869), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Unaccepted (1869) was sold at Christie’s, London in 1984. Tissot used different models, but reuses the man’s costume and the woman’s hat, and he again features the pug dog.

A pencil study for Unaccepted (12.25 by 8.75 in./31 by 22.2 cm) was sold at Christie’s, London in 1996 for $ 6,590/£ 4,000. At that time, a study for the girl was in a private collection in Los Angeles.

La Cheminée (By the Fireside, c. 1869), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 50.8 by 33.97 cm. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

La Cheminée/By the Fireside (c. 1869), almost certainly depicting an interior of James Tissot’s sumptuous villa on the avenue de l’impératrice in Paris, was in the private collection of New York-based philanthropists John and Frances L. Loeb from 1955. American stockbroker Jerome Davis purchased it from them at Christie’s, New York in 1997 for $ 1,700,000/£ 1,046,991. When the stock market crashed and Davis fell into debt, he sold La Cheminée at Christie’s, London in 2003 for $2,334,780/£ 1,400,000.

In 2008, La Cheminée was offered for sale at Sotheby’s, London, but failed to find a buyer.

Jeune femme à l’éventail (Young Woman with a Fan, c. 1870-71), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 31.30 by 22.76 in. (79.50 by 57.80 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

In Jeune femme à l’éventail (Young Woman with a Fan, c. 1870-71), the model wears the dress from La Cheminée. This picture was with Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, by July 1872, as The Fan. It was purchased by John Foster, and it remained in the family for many years until it was sold as Girl with a Fan by Martin Foster at Christie’s, London in 1977 for $ 21,703/£ 12,500. It then was with Colnaghi’s, London and was sold again at Sotheby’s, Belgravia in 1981 as Summer Dreams, for $ 44,986/£ 20,000. It was owned by Walter F. Brown (1930 – 2014), an independent oil and gas producer and investor in Texas who founded Delray Oil, Inc. and collected art with his wife, Lenora [including Asian works, which they began donating to the San Antonio Museum of Art in the 1980s]. Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, acquired Young Woman with a Fan, and it was purchased by Sir Arthur Gilbert, who also owned Tissot’s Tryst at a Riverside Café. Young Woman with a Fan was offered for sale at Christie’s, New York in 2012, but failed to find a buyer.

Jeune femme en bateau (Young Woman in a Boat, 1870), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot painted several versions of Young Woman in a Boat (1870) from his studio in the avenue de l’Impératrice (now avenue Foch) in Paris. One, oil on panel measuring 13 by 9 in. (33.02 by 22.86 cm) was sold in 1979 at Sotheby’s, Belgravia for $ 862/£ 380. In 1985, an oil on canvas measuring 20 by 26 in. (50.80 by 66.04 cm) sold at Sotheby’s, London for $ 402,721/£ 310,000; this version was displayed at the Salon in 1870, one of Tissot’s final two oils exhibited in Paris prior to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the following year.

In the painting shown above, the model wears the dress from Unaccepted. One critic described the pug in this picture as “a dog with the head of a monkey…who appears without doubt to be a very rare species.”

On the River (1871), by James Tissot.

On the River (1871), measuring 34 by 19 in. (86.36 by 48.26 cm), was in the collection of Mrs. M. Ford until it was sold at Sotheby’s, London for $ 1,175/£ 420 in 1964.

It was purchased by Jeremy Maas, a London art dealer who sold it to the U.K. Department of the Environment in July, 1973.

As part of the Government Art Collection, On the River is now at the British Embassy in Paris.

Another oil version of On the River (1876), measuring 33 by 19 in. (83.82 by 48.26 cm) sold at Sotheby’s, London in 1959 for $ 615/£ 220. As Lady on the river, this version sold at the same auction house in 1972 for $ 7,290/£ 3,100.

See other versions of Young Woman in a Boat at Girls to Float Your Boat, by James Tissot.

Tissot’s Un souper sous le Directoire (c. 1870) is possibly a sly reference to the new republican government declared in France on September 4, 1870, after Napoleon III’s surrender to the Prussians.

This celebratory scene was exhibited at the Third International Exhibition in Vienna in 1871, when its title was changed to Vive la République!

It made its way to India, where it is now in the collection of the Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery in Vadodara, Gujarat.

The pug dog is under the table.

La partie carrée (The Foursome, 1870), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 47 by 57 in. (119.5 by 144.5 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

La partie carrée (1870) was purchased for $ 4,479/£ 1,600 at Sotheby’s, London in 1964 by Williams and Son, Ltd., London, and it was in a private collection in Zurich by 1982, before becoming the property of a U.S. collector on the west coast. It was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 1995 for $ 390,000/£ 247,461, and then at Christie’s, New York in 2001 for $ 700,000/£ 487,838.

A preparatory oil sketch (11 by 15 in./27.94 by 38.10 cm) for La Partie Carrée was sold at Christie’s, New York in 1996 for $ 28,000/£ 18,530.

The model on the left wears the dress from La Cheminée. Do you see the pug dog?

The high life, 1868: Tissot, his villa & The Circle of the Rue Royale

“Hurling towards the abyss”: The Second Empire, 1869

The calm before the storm: Courbet & Tissot in Paris, January to June, 1870

Tissot’s last Salon: Paris, 1870

Girls to Float Your Boat, by James Tissot

The Missing Tissot Nudes

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

Today is April Fool’s Day – and my birthday – so here’s something a little offbeat.

Among the contemporary subjects painted by French artists in the second half of the nineteenth century were various incarnations of Polichinelle, a comic figure based on Pulcinella in the Italian Commedia dell’Arte – in English, Punch. In Paris, Polichinelle featured in a marionette theater that opened around 1860 in the Tuileries Gardens.

Portrait of Harlequin Polichinelle (1860), by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier. Oil on pine panel. 55.2 by 36 cm. Wallace Collection, London. (Photo: Wiki.cultured.com)

Tissot’s enormously successful friend and mentor, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815 – 1891), painted at least a dozen versions of Polichinelle, including Polichinelle à la Rose (1879; oil on canvas, 17 by 11 in./43.18 by 27.94 cm; Private Collection) and Portrait of Harlequin Polichinelle (above; The Wallace Collection, London).

Harlequin Polichinelle is painted on a pine panel which once formed part of a door in the Paris apartment of Apollonie Sabatier (1822 – 1890), a famous courtesan whose salons were attended by artists and writers including Baudelaire, Flaubert and Meissonier. In 1861, a year after Meissonier painted this picture, it was cut from the door and retouched by the artist for sale by Madame Sabatier, who was said to be the mistress of Sir Richard Wallace (1818 – 1890). His father, Lord Hertford, who lived in Paris and owned the finest private art collection in Europe, bought the painting for the generous sum of 13,000 francs (about £520).

The Actor (Le troisième comedien, 1867-68), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 12.80 by 7.28 in. (32.50 by 18.50 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

In 1869, James Tissot was at the top of his game. His paintings, for the wealthy and titled collectors he attracted, depicted the leisured and refined life of the Second Empire: The Staircase, Le goûter/Afternoon Tea, At the Rifle Range, Les patineuses (Lac de Longchamps)/Women Skating (Lake Longchamps), and Rêverie. He executed at least one grisaille sketch, Tuileries Gardens, of a masked ball given by the Imperial court – perhaps its last.

Tissot recently had moved into the sumptuous new villa he had built at the most prestigious address in Haussmann’s renovated Paris: the twelve-year-old avenue de l’Impératrice (Empress Avenue, now avenue Foch). His new studio, a showcase for his renowned collection of Japanese art, quickly had become a landmark to see when touring Paris. His Salon exhibits included Young Women Looking at Japanese Objects and A Widow.

Rather than paint Polichinelle, Tissot exhibited two of a series of six comedians at the Cercle de l’Union Artistique in 1869. These were character studies of comedians who ran the gamut from Le premier comédien, an elegant entertainer with the Comédie-Française, to Le sixème comédien, a sad clown with a travelling circus.

Tissot’s Le deuxième comédien, a comical vision of a Renaissance scholar with a long, fur-trimmed coat and an armful of heavy books, was exhibited at the Cercle de l’Union Artistique in Paris in 1869. It found its way to The Fine Art Society in London by December, 1993 and sold at Christie’s, London, on December 11, 2014 for $ 35,370 USD/£ 22,500 GBP (Premium).

In 2006, Le troisième comédien (above) was sold as The Actor at the Dorotheum, Vienna. In 2008, it was sold at De Vuyst, Lokeren, in Belgium for € 8,400 EUR (Premium; $ 11,313 USD/£ 6,641 GBP).

Polichinelle (1873), by Edouard Manet. Oil on canvas, 19.88 by 12.91 in. (50.50 by 32.80 cm). Private Collection. (Wikiart.org)

Another of Tissot’s friends, Edouard Manet, painted Polichinelle.

In a cover design for a group of 1862 etchings, Manet showed the comedian peeking out from behind a curtain that reads, “Polichinelle Presents: Etchings by Edouard Manet.”

In 1873, the year Manet painted The Railway and sold it to Paris opera baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, he gave his painting of Polichinelle to Faure. It was sold at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in 1878, to Madame Martinet, Paris who sold it at Hôtel Drouot in 1893 to Claude Lafontaine, Paris. It was purchased by French margarine magnate and art collector Auguste Pellerin, Paris and sold at Hôtel Drouot in 1926 to Belgian art collector and dealer Joseph Hessel, Paris. In 1999, it was sold at Christie’s, New York to a private collector, and in November, 2014, it was sold at Sotheby’s, New York for $ 3,525,000 USD/£ 2,202,299 GBP (Premium).

Polichinelle (1874), by Edouard Manet. Gouache and watercolor over lithograph, 18.2 by 13.3 in. (46.3 by 33.7 cm). Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris. (Wikimedia.org)

In 1874, when The Railway was exhibited at the Salon and ridiculed by the critics and the public, Manet made a series of prints of another Polichinelle, above.

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (also known as Amateur Circus, 1885), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 58 by 40 in./147.3 by 101.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

After enduring the Franco-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris, the Commune, self-imposed exile in London for eleven years as he built a new career but ultimately was left behind in both the French and British capitals, and the death of his lovely young mistress, Tissot returned to Paris.

There, with Manet dead and Impressionism well established as the prevailing art trend, Tissot exerted himself to re-establish his reputation with a series of fifteen large-scale paintings called “La Femme à Paris” (Women of Paris). He painted these large works between 1883 and 1885, illustrating the fashionable parisienne in various incarnations using brighter, more modern colors than he had in his previous work.

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (1885) is one in this series. The setting for this picture is the Molier Circus in Paris, a “high-life circus” in which the amateur performers were members of the aristocracy. People of beauty and fashion attended the circus and mingled with the performers during the interval.

The man on the trapeze wearing red is the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, one of the oldest titles of the French nobility; he was said to have “the biceps of Hercules.”

Under him in the ring, competing for the attention of the sophisticated, bored Parisians in the audience, Tissot painted a forlorn, comic character played by Jules Ravaut. Tissot’s last clown, he wears the Union Jack on his costume.

Related posts:

The Missing Tissot Nudes

Was James Tissot a Plagiarist?

More “Plagiarists”: Tissot’s friends Manet, Degas, Whistler & Others

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

All auction prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/£ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

Before the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), James Tissot painted scenes from France’s Directory period; after he emigrated to England in 1871, he began to paint scenes from England’s Georgian period.

Theresa Parker (1787), by Sir Joshua Reynolds. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

The Georgian era encompasses the reigns of George I, George II, George III, George IV, and George IV’s brother, William IV, the period from 1714 to 1837. During that time, improvements in transportation and manufacturing led to the rise of towns and cities and a growing middle class that could afford increasingly mass-produced consumer goods – a similar situation to Tissot’s life in Paris during the heady, prosperous years before the Franco-Prussian War. Tissot enjoyed depicting fabrics and polished surfaces that showcased his consummate skill with paint, and despite some success painting modern subjects in Paris, he now reverted to painting uncontroversial, bygone times.

As a newcomer seeking to rebuild his career in London, he exchanged the racy sexuality of his Directory paintings for the poignancy and comedy of his Georgian pictures. His style was inspired by portraits by the British painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723 – 1792), a co-founder of the Royal Academy. Reynolds was revered, and an exhibition of his work was held at the Royal Academy in 1872.

Tissot, who had reinvented himself from a painter of medieval scenes to achieve a remarkable success in Paris as a painter of chic aristocrats, reinvented himself again to appeal to Victorian critics and patrons. That he applied himself to this new direction is clear from extant studies such as two pencil sketches from this period (c.1872) in the collection of The Tate, in London: Study after Reynolds’ Portrait of Mrs. Williams Hope and Study of a Girl in a Mob Cap.

Reading a Book, by James Tissot, (c. 1872-73). Oil on panel, 45.00 by 31.50 cm. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

The emphasis on the mob cap is evident in Reading a Book, sold at Christie’s London in 1983 for $ 18,546 USD/£ 12,000 GBP to Umeda Gallery, Osaka, Japan and then to a private collector in Tokyo.

Tissot used the same mob cap and white dress (as well as the chair) in his other paintings of this period.

Bad News (The Parting), (1872), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 27 by 36 in. (68.8 by 91.4). The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

As in Tissot’s Directory paintings, his figures are actors onstage. In Bad News (1872), a young couple absorbs the reality of his new military orders while a woman prepares tea. Bad News first belonged to A.B. Stewart. In 1881, it was sold as The Parting to William Menelaus (1818 – 1882), a Scottish-born engineer, iron and steel manufacturer, and inventor. He earned a fortune at the Dowlais Ironworks in South Wales, and his only extravagance was his art collection, which was said to fill his home in Merthyr. He donated pieces to the Cardiff Free Library, then upon his death in 1882, bequeathed to it the remaining thirty-six paintings, valued at £10,000. His bequest included James Tissot’s Bad News (The Parting), now in the collection of the National Museum Cardiff.

Tea (1872), by James Tissot. Oil on wood, 26 by 18 7/8 in. (66 by 47.9 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photo: Wikiart.org)

In Tea (1872), Tissot expanded the left side of Bad News (The Parting), further demonstrating his skill at painting fashion, china, silver and polished wood. In a private collection in Rome, Italy in 1968, Tea was with Somerville & Simpson, Ltd., London, by 1979-81, when it was consigned to Mathiessen Fine Art Ltd., London. It was purchased from Mathiessen by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York. Upon Mr. Wrightsman’s death in 1986, socialite, philanthropist and fine arts collector Mrs. Charles Wrightsman (b. 1919) owned it until 1998, when she gifted it to the Met. It is currently on view.

Tissot’s friend Edgar Degas owned a pencil study for Tea, inscribed “à mon ami Degas/J. Tissot/Londres.” This sketch later was owned by the Duke of Verdura (1898 – 1978), an influential Italian jeweler who was introduced to Coco Chanel by Cole and Linda Porter, two of his early backers. This drawing, now in a private collection, has a study for How We Read the News of our Marriage (see below) on the other side.

An Interesting Story (c. 1872), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 59.7 by 76.6 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

An Interesting Story was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872. Tissot showcased his expertise painting ship’s rigging – using the Thames as the background to make his art relevant to British patrons – while offering his own brand of humor. Those poor women! While one yawns, the other looks almost as if she is praying for release from the man’s interminable tale. Their obvious boredom surely transcends cultures.

An Interesting Story entered the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia in 1938 with the Felton Bequest (a philanthropic trust established with the Will of Alfred Felton [1831 –1904], an Australian entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist, who remained unmarried and childless all his life).

We feel even worse for the patiently suffering girl in the version below. She is definitely praying.

The Tedious Story (c. 1872), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In 1878, Tissot reproduced The Tedious Story (also called An Uninteresting Story) as an etching and exhibited it at London’s Grosvenor Gallery as The Bow Window.

How We Read the News of our Marriage, by James Tissot.

The unlocated 1872 painting, How We Read the News of our Marriage, must have been quite popular to have been commercially reproduced as a steel engraving in 1874. As he reads the marriage notice, is she bored or regretful already, gazing out the window? Or is her gentle smile one of modesty and contentment with her rather preening husband?

There is an oil study called The Tryst, a variation of this scene in which the woman looks down at the man while he kneels before her. It sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 1982 for $ 36,000 USD/£ 21,452 GBP.

Back in Paris, Tissot’s friends Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet still were struggling for critical acceptance and for patrons. But Tissot, who had arrived in London in the bloody aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War with only one hundred francs to his name, worked prodigiously to produce all these paintings in just one year. From this cautious start painting conservative Georgian pictures, he gained a foothold with art collectors among British politicians, bankers and industrialists and began painting for them the modern subjects and portraits that had brought him immense wealth among aristocrats in pre-war Paris.

To learn more about the challenges that James Tissot faced as he pursued his career in London for over a decade – reinventing himself yet again as a painter of domestic bliss with his beautiful young mistress – read The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot.

Related blog posts:

James Tissot’s Directoire series, 1868-71

The calm before the storm: Courbet & Tissot in Paris, January to June, 1870

“Napoleon is an idiot”: Courbet & the Fall of the Second Empire, 1870

James Tissot and The Artists’ Brigade, 1870-71

Paris, June 1871

London, June 1871

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

Though James Tissot has a reputation for painting languorous ladies, his paintings from the 1870s often depict scenes of psychological tension, and he frequently used weather as a device to heighten the mood.

While Tissot relied on studio models and photographs, and did not experiment with painting en plein air until after the middle of this decade, his skillfully rendered atmospheric conditions accentuate, or add ambiguity, to his subject matter in a manner wholly his own.

He first communicated mood using weather in Promenade dans la neige (A Walk in the Snow, 1858), exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1859, when he made his debut in his early twenties.

This picture of a medieval couple taking a walk on a snow-covered hill overlooking a distant castle evokes the tense mood of the man and the woman, who have just quarreled.

Still on Top (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 88 by 54 cm. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Still on Top (c. 1874) depicts two women and an elderly male servant wearing a red liberty cap, a revolutionary symbol in France. Tissot painted this scene only three years after he had fled Paris – under some suspicion – during the French government’s suppression of the radical Paris Commune. It’s really rather daring for an apparent French political refugee of the time, remaking his career in England: as the three figures raise the flags, which flag is on top? Tissot uses the brisk wind to create a thrilling sense of anticipation.

On the Thames (1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas; 28.5 by 46.5 in. (72.5 by 118 cm). Hepworth Wakefield Art Gallery, Wakefield, UK. Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in “The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot” by Lucy Paquette, © 2012.

In On the Thames, smoke and fog envelop a vessel in a picture construed by Victorian critics to show a British Naval ensign’s shocking excursion with two ladies of ill repute. Whether or not Tissot intended to portray a shady situation, he cleared the air for his critics when he painted a corrective the following year: in Portsmouth Dockyard (c.1877), the respectable Highland sergeant (sans champagne bottles) is out on a bright day with noticeably improved air quality.

Portsmouth Dockyard (c. 1877), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 38.1 by 54.6 cm. Tate Britain, London. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

A Passing Storm (c. 1876), by James Tissot. (30.3 by 39.3 in./76.84 by 99.7 cm). Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick, Canada. (Photo: WIkimedia.org)

A Passing Storm (c. 1876) is a great example of Tissot’s manner of permeating scenes with psychological tension. The man and woman have just quarreled, and they each are taking time to cool off; their anger will pass like the storm clouds overhead.

October (1877), by James Tissot. 85 by 42.8 in. (216 by 108.7 cm). Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

But Tissot’s work certainly offers more than unrelenting snow, wind, smog and stormy skies. In October (1877), he shows Kathleen Newton, his twenty-three year old mistress and muse, glowing in the autumnal sun, apparently the picture of health though she would pass away from tuberculosis in five years.

The Letter (c. 1878), by James Tissot. 27 by 40 in. (68.58 by 101.60 cm). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot’s women of this period can be more psychologically complex than females painted by other artists of the era. While many French and Victorian artists of the time produced sentimental scenes of pretty women reading love letters, Tissot’s The Letter (c. 1878) shows a woman angrily shredding a missive and casting it to the winds. By her choice, the relationship is at an end, blowing away with the autumnal leaves.

The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent), c. 1878, by James Tissot. Oil on panel; 14 ¼ by 8 11/16 in. (36.2 by 21.8 cm). Manchester Art Gallery, U.K. (Photo: Wikiart.org).

It is a chilly day in The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent, c. 1878). A pretty woman is bundled up and walks, impassive, ahead of her elderly, invalid father as he is pushed in his elaborate wheeled chair. Many Victorian painters would have depicted her as a loving presence, solicitous of his comfort. But Tissot has made the coldness palpable: the two seem distant from each other, and she has caught the eye of an implied passer-by – a man whom her father does not notice.

This small picture relies, as so many of Tissot’s paintings of this period do, on the beauty of model Kathleen Newton. Ironically, it was in the last years of her life, and after her death, that Tissot painted some of his sunniest scenes.

En plein soleil (In the Sunshine, c. 1881), by James Tissot. Oil on wood, 9 3/4 by 13 7/8 in. (24.8 by 35.2 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Wikiart.org)

In the Sunshine (c. 1881) celebrates the domestic bliss Tissot enjoyed in his years living in London with Mrs. Newton and her children.

The Artists’ Ladies (1885), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 57 1/2 by 40 in. (146.1 by 101.6 cm.) The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Immediately after Kathleen Newton’s death in 1882, Tissot returned to Paris, where he exerted himself to re-establish his reputation with a series of fifteen large-scale pictures called La Femme à Paris (The Parisian Woman). Painted between 1883 and 1885, they portrayed the fashionable parisienne in various incarnations using brighter, more modern colors than he had used in his previous work.

The Artists’ Wives (also called The Artist’s Ladies, 1885) depicts a gathering of artists and their wives on Varnishing Day, the evening before the official opening of the Salon, the annual art exhibition in Paris at the Palais de l’Industrie. The artists could put a final coat of protective varnish on their work, and they and their wives and friends could view the exhibition privately, when “the great effort of the year is over, and when our pictures are safely hung, and are inviting the critics to do their worst and the buyers to do their best!” Tissot depicts the celebratory luncheon on the terrace of the restaurant Le Doyen, with the entrance to the Palais de l’Industrie in the background. Celebrities present include the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917), the man with the brown beard and spectacles standing in the center of the picture.

In this scene, the bright, sunny day underscores professional success and camaraderie – as well as a considerable amount of resilience on Tissot’s part.

But the sun had set on James Tissot’s career as a painter of modern life and its emotional climes: La Femme à Paris was not a success, and he turned to pastel portraits of Society women, and the Bible illustrations for which he would become famous in his later years.

James Tissot’s garden idyll & Kathleen Newton’s death

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

James Tissot’s tense, moody oil paintings from the mid-1870s gave way to straightforward scenes filled with the contentment of domestic life, during the few years of Tissot’s life in which he could enjoy a household of children.

For six years, he shared his home with his much younger mistress and muse, Kathleen Irene Ashburnham Kelly Newton (1854 – 1882). Kathleen, a divorcée, previously had been living with her married sister, Mary Pauline “Polly” Ashburnham Kelly Hervey (1851/52 – 1896), around the corner at 6, Hill Road.

[Click here to see an 1871 London map showing Grove End Road in relation to Hill Road.]

On March 21, 1876, Kathleen’s son, Cecil George Newton, was born at 6, Hill Road. Her daughter, Muriel Violet Mary Newton, was four, and her sister, Polly Hervey, had two daughters, three-year-old Isabelle Mary (“Belle”) and one-year old Lilian Ethel (“Lily”).

According to legend, Tissot met Mrs. Newton while posting a letter. She moved into Tissot’s large home at 17 (now 44), Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood (west of Regent’s Park) about 1876.

Study for “Mrs. Newton with a Child by a Pool” (c. 1877-78), by James Tissot. Oil on mahogany panel, 12 ¾ by 16 ¾ in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), Richmond, Virginia. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Study for “Mrs. Newton with a Child by a Pool” (c. 1877-78) depicts Mrs. Newton by the ornamental pool in Tissot’s garden. The oil painting that resulted from Tissot’s study, Mrs. Newton with a Child by a Pool (1878) is in a private collection. At auction at Christie’s, London in 1995, the Lot Notes read, “In this oil sketch, possibly made from life, [Kathleen Newton] is seen in the garden of the house in Grove End Road, presumably with the son [born Cecil George Newton, 1876; died Cecil Ashburnham, 1941] she had by either Tissot or a previous lover.”

Hide and Seek (1877), by James Tissot. 28 7/8 by 21 1/4 in. (73.4 by 53.9 cm). The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, by Lucy Paquette © 2012

Hide and Seek (1877) shows Mrs. Newton relaxing with a newspaper in Tissot’s studio, which looked out on his extensive garden, while her children and nieces play.

Reading a Story (c. 1878-79), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Reading a Story, c. 1878-79, captures Kathleen Newton in a private moment with her niece, Lilian Hervey.

Uncle Fred (Frederick Kelly with his niece Lilian Hervey, 1879-80), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 7 by 12 in./17.78 by 30.48 cm. Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Kathleen Kelly’s marriage to Dr. Isaac Newton, a surgeon in the Indian Civil Service, had been arranged by her older brother, Frederick Kelly. The ceremony took place on January 3, 1871, when she was seventeen, and the marriage ended in divorce within months. Mrs. Newton returned to England and gave birth to Violet at the end of the year. Tissot painted Uncle Fred (Kathleen Newton’s brother, Frederick Kelly, with his niece Lilian Hervey in 1879-80, and he kept it until his death in 1902. His own niece, Jeanne Tissot, who lived in France, kept this painting until her death in 1964, after which it was sold. Andrew Lloyd Webber purchased the painting at Sotheby’s, New York in February, 1994.

Quiet (c. 1881), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 13 by 9 in./33.02 by 22.86 cm. Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Quiet (c. 1881) shows Kathleen reading a story to her niece, Lilian Hervey, on another day (probably closer to 1879-80) in Tissot’s garden. Quiet was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881. It was purchased by Richard Donkin, M.P. (1836 – 1919), an English ship owner who was elected Member of Parliament for the newly created constituency of Tynemouth in the 1885 general election. The small painting remained in the family and was kept in perfect condition. It was a major discovery of a Tissot work when it appeared on the market in November, 1993, and it was purchased by Andrew Lloyd Webber at Christie’s, London for $ 416,220/£ 280,000.

Incidentally, it was Lilian Hervey who, at age 71 in 1946, publicly identified “La Mystérieuse” – the Mystery Woman who so often appeared in Tissot’s work – as her aunt, Kathleen Newton, when a reporter published a request for information.

Kathleen Newton at the Piano (c. 1881), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 44 by 30 in. (111.76 by 76.20 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Around 1881, Tissot painted Kathleen Newton at the Piano. Her son, Cecil, now about age five, stands at her left. The tall girl behind him is probably his sister, Violet, now about ten, and the girl on the right is probably his cousin, Belle, now about eight.

In 1989, Kathleen Newton at the Piano was sold at Sotheby’s, New York for $ 400,000/£ 228,480.

Just seven years later, in 1996, the picture was sold at the same auction house for $ 200,000/£ 125,620.

En plein soleil (In the Sunshine, c. 1881), by James Tissot. Oil on wood, 9 3/4 by 13 7/8 in. (24.8 x 35.2 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

En plein soleil (c. 1881), shows Kathleen Newton (in the left hand corner) in the garden of Tissot’s home in St. John’s Wood. The woman seated on the brick wall is either Kathleen’s sister, Polly, or Kathleen’s doppelgänger, in a composite picture. Cecil, shown in his brown suit, would have been about five. Polly had a son, Arthur Reginald (“Bob”) Hervey, in March, 1878, who may be the child under the parasol. The girl in pink is possibly Kathleen’s niece, Lilian Hervey, around age six.

A Children’s Party (c. 1881-82), by James Tissot. 32.4 by 24.1 cm. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

A Children’s Party (c. 1881-82), shows a family celebration in Tissot’s garden. The woman in the foreground, serving tea, is probably Polly Hervey, with Cecil George seated near her. Kathleen is in the background, on the left.

Le Petit Nemrod (A Little Nimrod), c. 1882, by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 34 ½ by 55 3/5 in. (110.5 by 141.3 cm). Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’archéologie, Besançon, France. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Le Petit Nemrod (A Little Nimrod, c. 1882) depicts cousins, the children of Mrs. Newton and her sister Polly Hervey, playing together in a London park. (Nimrod, according to the Book of Genesis, was a great-grandson of Noah, and he is depicted in the Hebrew Bible as a mighty hunter.)

Le banc de jardin/The Garden Bench (1882), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 99.1 by 142.2 cm. Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Le banc de jardin/The Garden Bench (c. 1882) was a favorite image of Tissot’s; he kept it all his life. Pictured are Kathleen Newton, her daughter Violet, her son Cecil George, and a second girl who could be her niece Lilian Hervey or her niece Belle (behind the bench).

American millionaire Frederick Koch (b. 1933) began collecting Victorian paintings in the 1980s. Tissot’s Le banc de jardin (The Garden Bench) set an auction price record in 1983, when Fred Koch paid $ 803,660/£ 520,000 for it at Christie’s, London. In October, 1994, Le Banc de jardin set another record for a Victorian picture – as well as a record to date for a Tissot painting – when Lloyd Webber purchased it from Fred Koch for $ 4,800,000/£ 3,035,093 at Sotheby’s, New York.

When Kathleen Newton died of tuberculosis on November 9, 1882, the happy family life Tissot had depicted for six years ended immediately. Tissot remained in London only long enough to attend Kathleen’s funeral. He then moved to Paris and lived in France for the final twenty years of his life.

According to Tissot scholars David S. Brooke, Michael Wentworth (1938 – 2002), and Willard E. Misfeldt, Kathleen’s daughter, Violet, and her son, Cecil George, spent the next two years with their aunt, Polly Hervey, at 6, Hill Road. Violet, after being educated in a convent in Belgium, became a governess in Golders Green, a London suburb.

Cecil George became an army captain. Before he turned twenty, he contacted the man named as his father on his birth certificate – Dr. Isaac Newton. Though Cecil was rejected, he later made a claim on Dr. Newton’s estate that proved futile. Violet also made a claim on Dr. Newton’s estate. She won on a legal technicality and was granted a settlement of £ 10,000.

James Tissot, who died in 1902, left Violet and Cecil each 1,000 francs in his Will. A servant located their addresses, which indicates that Tissot had not been in touch with them in his final years.

Cecil married in 1904, at age twenty-eight, an actress named Florence Tyrrell. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery during the Great War and was discharged as an invalided officer in 1916. He and Florence divorced in 1924. My research indicates that Florence Tyrrell had a steady career performing in comedies on the London stage for over twenty-five years.

Violet, at the age of fifty-four in 1925, married William Henry Bishop in London and died of a heart attack in Spain at age sixty-two.

That same year – 1933 – at the first retrospective exhibition of James Tissot’s work at the Leicester Gallery, London, Cecil made a bit of a scene by standing before the paintings of Tissot’s mysterious muse and announcing, “That was my mother!” before making a quick exit. Cecil died as Cecil Ashburnham in 1941, at age sixty-five in Lancing (a town on the English Channel, near Brighton). Cecil left no Will, but his estate, valued for probate at £108.12s.6d, was administered by George Ashburnham Newton, of Llandudno, a seaside town in Wales.

James Tissot’s garden idyll & Kathleen Newton’s death

Was Cecil Newton James Tissot’s son?

A visit to James Tissot’s house & Kathleen Newton’s grave

Tissot’s Romances

James Tissot in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9).

See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

NOTE: If you do not have a Kindle e-reader, you may download free Kindle reading apps for PCs, Smartphones, tablets, and the Kindle Cloud Reader to read The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot. Read reviews.

Both James Tissot and Edgar Degas produced paintings based on visits to the Louvre in 1879. They had met in 1859, and they remained friends for at least thirty-six years.

Visit to a Museum (La visite au musée, c. 1880), by Edgar Degas. Oil on canvas, 91.7 by 67.9 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Degas produced a series of drawings, pastels, paintings and prints portraying the American painter Mary Cassatt at the Louvre. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cassatt studied art in America and Europe before moving to Paris, where she began exhibiting at the Salon. The two artists met in 1877, when she was 33 and Degas was 43. Degas invited Cassatt to join the third exhibition of independent painters who were adopting the name “Impressionists”; she waited until their next exhibition, in 1879.

They were not known to be romantically involved, but they were particularly close around 1879-80. They socialized together, worked together, and collected each other’s art. Despite a rift in 1895, their friendship lasted until Degas’ death in 1917. They destroyed each other’s letters. In later life, Degas told a mutual friend, “I could have married her, but I could never have made love to her.” When she was an old lady, a relative dared to ask her if she had had an affair with Degas, and she replied, “What, with that common little man; what a repulsive idea!” But when he died, she told a friend that Degas was “the last great artist of the nineteenth century. I see no one to replace him.”

Woman Viewed from Behind (Visit to a Museum, c. 1879-1885), by Edgar Degas. Oil on canvas, 32 by 29 3/4 in. (81.3 by 75.6 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Mary Cassatt at the Louvre – The Etruscan Gallery (c. 1879-80), by Edgar Degas. Softground etching, drypoint, aquatint, and etching, 26.8 by 23.2 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery (1879-80), by Edgar Degas. Etching, softground etching, aquatint and drypoint on blacons wove paper, 11.9 by 5 in./30.3 by 12.7 cm. Brooklyn Museum, New York. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Study for Mary Cassatt at the Louvre (c. 1879), by Edgar Degas. Pastel on paper, 25 by 19 1/4 in. (63.5 by 48.9 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Mary Cassatt at the Louvre (Miss Cassatt au musée du Louvre, c. 1879), by Edgar Degas. Pastel on paper, 28 by 21 in. (71.12 by 53.34 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Degas’ Mary Cassatt at the Louvre (Miss Cassatt au musée du Louvre, c. 1879) was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 2002 for $ 15,000,000/£ 10,319,207.

The highest price paid to date for a work by James Tissot was $ 4,800,000/£ 3,035,093 for Le banc de jardin/The Garden Bench (c. 1882, oil on canvas, 99.1 by 142.2 cm); award-winning musical theater composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) purchased it from American millionaire Frederick Koch (b. 1933) at Sotheby’s, New York in 1994.

But in 1879, at 43, James Tissot was much more famous and successful than his friend Edgar Degas. Tissot had left Paris for London after the Franco-Prussian War and its bloody aftermath, the Commune, in 1871. Degas urged him to exhibit with the independents in 1874, but to no avail. Tissot’s visit to the Louvre with Kathleen Newton, his 25-year-old divorced mistress and muse, resulted in numerous studies and completed paintings on paper, cardboard, wood, and canvas.

At the Louvre (c. 1879-80), by James Tissot. Pencil and watercolor, 16 by 9 in. (40.64 by 22.86 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

At the Louvre (c. 1879-80), shows a figure modeled by Kathleen Newton glancing at an implied visitor – perhaps another man – while the men around her are absorbed in their guide books. This watercolor was exhibited at the Société d’Aquarellistes Français in 1883, and Tissot kept it his entire life.

After the death of his niece, it was sold from his chateau in Besançon, France in 1961-62. It was in a private collection in France before being purchased by the Martyn Gregory Gallery in London. By 1984, it belonged to Andrew Brown, and it later was purchased by the Richard Green Gallery, London. In 2003, it was sold at Sotheby’s, London to a private collector for $ 51,420/£ 30,000.

At the Louvre (c. 1880), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 29 by 20 in. (73.66 by 50.80 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Another version of At the Louvre, showing a young woman (modeled by Kathleen Newton) and two gentlemen bending to observe a wide basin, was sold at Sotheby’s, New York in 1979 for $ 23,000/£ 11,141.

Foreign Visitors at the Louvre (c. 1880), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 14 1/4 by 10 3/8 in./36.3 by 26.4 cm. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Foreign Visitors at the Louvre (c. 1880, oil on canvas, 29 by 19.5 in.) was donated to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California by the estate of Barbara Darlington Dupee in 2013. It shows a glowing Kathleen Newton looking at an implied visitor – again, perhaps another man?

Tissot made a small grisaille oil study, c. 1880, of the figure of Mrs. Newton for this painting. Known as A Study for Visiteurs étrangers au Louvre (oil on panel, 12 by 9.45 in./30.5 by 24 cm), it was with the Wildenstein Galleries before being purchased from Christie’s, New York in 1977 for a private collection in Melbourne, Australia.

A final, complete study for Foreign Visitors at the Louvre (Visiteurs étrangers au Louvre, c. 1880, oil on panel, 14 1/4 by 10 3/8 in./36.3 by 26.4 cm) was sold at Sotheby’s, London in 1973 for $ 19,101/£ 7,500. It belonged to H. Stewart Black, England before being purchased by the Richard Green Gallery, London, and then the Herman Shickman Gallery, New York, where it was sold to a private collector about 1975 and remained in the family. In 2004, it was sold at Sotheby’s, New York for $ 270,000/£ 152,749.

View of the Landing of the North Staircase of the Colonnade at the Louvre (c. 1880), by James Tissot. Oil on cardboard, 62 by 38 cm.

Tissot made several studies from this visit to the Louvre, showing interiors with no figures.

View of the Landing of the North Staircase of the Colonnade at the Louvre (c. 1880) belonged to Jean-Jacques Marquet Vasselot (1871 – 1946), a French archaeologist and art historian who began his career at the Louvre in 1902 and became director of the Musée de Cluny in 1933, the year he donated this Tissot oil to the French nation.

This is a study for The North Staircase of the Louvre (Escalier nord du Louvre, oil on canvas, 35 by 19 in./88.90 by 48.26 cm), a painting featuring a figure modeled by Kathleen Newton. The painting was sold at Christie’s, New York in 1997 for $ 350,000/£ 214,185.

View of the Hall of Septimus Severus from the Hall of Peace at the Louvre (c. 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on cardboard, 58.2 by 38.5 cm.

View of the Hall of Septimus Severus from the Hall of Peace at the Louvre (c. 1879) was acquired by France for its national collection in 1990.

It was a background study for another version of Foreign Visitors in the Louvre (Visiteurs étrangers au Louvre, oil on panel, 17 1/2 by 8 3/8 in./44.4 by 21.3 cm), which shows a figure in the foreground modeled by Kathleen Newton She wears a gown with a plaid skirt, and she carries a black fur muff. This painting, sold at the Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris, in 1907, was sold at Christie’s, London in 2006.

Another of Tissot’s interior studies of the Louvre, A Room of Sculptures (Une salle des sculptures de Louvre), is an oil on canvas measuring 15 by 10 in. (38.10 by 25.40 cm). It sold at Tajan, Paris in 2000 for 89,000 FRF ($ 12,753/€ 13,567/£ 8,437).

In the Louvre (L’Esthétique, 1883-1885), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 58 by 39 3/8 in. (144.4 by 100.0 cm). Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Luis A. Ferré (1904 – 2003), a Puerto Rican industrialist, politician, patron of the arts and philanthropist, had traveled to Europe in 1956 and acquired art including many Pre-Raphaelite works. Ferré would state in an interview published in Forbes magazine in 1993 that ”everyone thought I was crazy” to buy Pre-Raphaelite art in the 1950s. On January 3, 1959, with seventy-two works of art, Ferré opened an art museum in a small wooden house in his birthplace of Ponce which became the extraordinary Museo de Arte de Ponce (Ponce Museum of Art), now a premier institution of Italian Baroque, Spanish, Flemish, French Academic, and British 19th-century art. The museum’s renowned collection of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian art includes James Tissot’s In the Louvre (L’Esthétique, 1883-1885), which was purchased at Sotheby’s, London in April, 1959 for $ 2,099/£ 750 and entered the Ponce’s collection in 1962.

The woman shown in this painting does not resemble Kathleen Newton, who died of tuberculosis in 1882, though the figure may have been modeled on her during the visit she made to the Louvre with Tissot in 1879.

A smaller version of L’Esthétique (oil on canvas, 25.5 by 17.5/64.8 by 44. 4 cm) is in a private collection.

In the Louvre (1883-85, oil on canvas, 18.5 by 12.13/47 by 32 cm), a study of the interior for this picture, was gifted to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in Providence in 1962.

James Tissot and Edgar Degas remained friends until 1895 or 1897, when Tissot apparently angered Degas by selling one of his paintings, given as a gift.

But Degas offended Mary Cassatt in 1895 when he asked three thousand dollars for a picture Cassatt had sold for him to mutual friends for one thousand dollars in 1893; the friends paid the increased price, but Degas lost Cassatt’s friendship for a long time.

For more on Degas’ rifts with Tissot, Cassatt, and others at this time, see James Tissot the Collector: His works by Degas, Manet & Pissarro.

Related posts:

Was James Tissot a Plagiarist?

More “Plagiarists”: Tissot’s friends Manet, Degas, Whistler & Others

Tissot vs. Whistler, Degas, Manet & Morisot oils at auction

James Tissot in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

All prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/£ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

Many of James Tissot’s most memorable oil paintings feature images of women waiting. Sometimes they are with men, but the focal point is the woman’s impassive face and languorous mien. They are not waiting for anything, particularly. Yet rather than being pleasant and relaxing, these scenes are oppressively still and sometimes claustrophobic.

A Visit to the Yacht (1873), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 34 by 21 in./87.6 by 56 cm. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org).

In A Visit to the Yacht (1873), the two couples and the girl do not interact. They are bored and tense, just waiting in the same small space. Tissot sold this picture directly to Agnew’s, London for £650, as La Visite au Navire. Shortly after, Agnew’s, Liverpool sold the picture to David Jardine (1827-1911), a Liverpool timber broker, ship owner and art collector. Jardine was born in New Brunswick, to a family that had grown wealthy from the Canadian timber industry. After moving to Liverpool, Jardine eventually became Chairman of the Cunard Steamship Company.

In 1922, the painting was purchased at Christie’s, London by Vicars Brothers, art dealers in London.

William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme (1888 – 1949), who co-founded Unilever in 1930, purchased Tissot’s A Visit to the Yacht from the Leicester Galleries in 1933. Upon his death, Philip William Bryce Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme (1915 – 2000), succeeded to the title; he became Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire a few months later and was appointed a Knight of the Garter in 1988. Prior to his death in 2000, he lived and entertained at Thornton Manor in Cheshire, where his guests included Her Majesty the Queen Mother, Prince Philip, Princess Margaret, and Lord Snowdon, as well as members of other royal families, heads of state, and notable people from the worlds of industry, academia and the arts. The last male descendant of the 1^st Viscount Leverhulme, his titles became extinct.

Tissot’s A Visit to the Yacht was owned by the Estate of the 3rd Viscount Leverhulme, which sold The Leverhulme Collection from Thornton Manor at Sotheby’s in June, 2001. However, several paintings including A Visit to the Yacht were exhibited at the Lady Lever Art Gallery by the 3rd Viscount’s Executors.

The Trustees of the 3rd Viscount Leverhulme Will Trust offered Tissot’s A Visit to the Yacht for sale at Sotheby’s, London on December 4, 2013, but it did not find a buyer. However, it was announced later that the painting was sold privately to a buyer in the United States for a price within the estimated £2 to 3 million GBP it was expected to bring at the auction.

Tissot painted three versions of Waiting for the Ferry, one in 1874 and two around 1878, at the dock beside the Falcon Tavern, Gravesend. The women in these pictures don’t look preoccupied with their thoughts, or bored, as if they had something better to do: they’re simply waiting.

Waiting for the ferry outside the Falcon Inn (1874), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 26 by 37 in. (66.04 by 93.98 cm). The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In Tissot’s Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern (1874), man is busy reading, the little girl is obviously bored, but the woman is calmly waiting. This picture was exhibited at Nottingham Castle, and at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1887. It then was in the collection of James Hall, Esq., a prominent collector of Pre-Raphaelite art and the grandfather of Mrs. Edward Reeves, who sold the painting at Christie’s, London in 1954 to the John Nicholson Gallery, New York for $ 4,339 (£ 1550). In 1963, prominent collector Mrs. Blakemore Wheeler, who had owned the painting by 1957, gifted it to the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.

Waiting for the Ferry (c. 1878), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 10 by 14 in. (26.7 by 35.6 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

In about 1876, Tissot’s young mistress and muse, Kathleen Irene Ashburnham Kelly Newton (1854 – 1882), moved into his home at 17 (now 44), Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood, London. Tissot often painted her in his house or garden. Since they did not marry, they could not socialize in Victorian Society, but they made excursions outside London to places including Greenwich. The man in this picture, who may have been modeled by Kathleen’s brother, Frederick Kelly, is obviously bored, but the woman just waits.

This version of Waiting for the Ferry was with Leicester Galleries, London, by 1936, and again until about 1953. It was purchased by by English actor Alec Guinness (1914 – 2000) around 1955, before he was knighted, and it was sold at Christie’s in 1977 as Waiting for the Boat at Greenwich. It was purchased by the Owen Edgar Gallery, then by Roy Miles Fine Paintings and by 1984-85 belonged to Samuel A. McLean.

Waiting for the Ferry (c. 1878), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 9 by 13¾ in. (22.5 by 32.5 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

This version of Waiting for the Ferry does show the woman, modeled by Kathleen Newton, looking as bored as the two children, while the man, who was modeled by the artist himself, appears to be talking or whispering to her. This picture was owned by Mrs. Viva King by 1968. In 1920s London, Viva King was a beautiful and vivacious free spirit called the “Queen of Bohemia” by English writer Osbert Sitwell. Her husband, Willie King, was a curator at the British Museum, and in the 1940s, Viva was the hostess of a successful salon at Thurloe Square. Her Waiting for the Ferry later belonged to Charles de Pauw. It was sold at Christie’s, London in 1978 for $ 39,754/£ 22,000; Sotheby’s, London in 1986 for $ 73,568/£ 49,000; and Christie’s, London in 1993 for $ 148,650/£ 100,000.

Le banc de jardin/The Garden Bench (1882), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 99.1 by 142.2 cm. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Incidentally, while this version of Waiting for the Ferry is supposed to have been painted around 1878, Kathleen Newton’s son, Cecil, was born in March, 1876, and he clearly is older than two or two and a half here. In fact, it must have been painted in 1882, when Tissot painted Cecil at about six in The Garden Bench, wearing the same knit cap and brown suit. That would make the young girl in this Waiting for the Ferry Lilian Hervey, Kathleen Newton’s niece, who was seven in 1882 [Kathleen’s daughter, Muriel Violet Newton, was born in December, 1871 and would have been about ten at this time, too old to be the girl shown in this version of Waiting for the Ferry].

Tissot, Kathleen Newton, Cecil Newton, and Lilian Hervey posed for a photograph that gives some insight into how the artist composed this version of Waiting for the Ferry.

Kathleen Newton (center) and James Tissot (right) with her son, Cecil Newton. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London, by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 11 by 14 in. (27.94 by 35.56 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

On the Terrace of Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London (c. 1878) depicts people in a situation that suggests social interaction, but they appear to merely wait for something, with only the smoker evincing boredom. This painting is inscribed “No. 1 Trafalgar Tavern/(Greenwich)/oil painting/James Tissot/17 Grove End Road/St John’s Wood/London/N.W.” on an old label on the reverse. It belonged to Sir Thomas Wilson, Bt., before it was sold at Sotheby’s, Belgravia in 1970 for $ 9,839/£ 4,100. As “The Property of a Lady of Title,” it was sold at Christie’s, London in 1993 for $ 193,245/£ 130,000.

No other painter painted the act of waiting like Tissot, or as often as Tissot did.

James Tissot Domesticated

James Tissot’s garden idyll & Kathleen Newton’s death

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

Sometimes described as an Impressionist, James Tissot actually was a realist painter. In fact he declined his friend Edgar Degas’ invitation in 1874 to exhibit his work with a loose group of French painters who would become known as Impressionists.

Tissot had moved to London in June, 1871, in the aftermath of the bloody Paris Commune following the Franco-Prussian War. He rebuilt his lucrative career in England.

Degas wrote to him there, “Look here, my dear Tissot, no hesitations, no escape. You positively must exhibit at the Boulevard. It will do you good, you (for it is a means of showing yourself in Paris from which people said you were running away) and us too.” But Tissot felt no need to identify himself with these struggling artists.

While his skillfully rendered atmospheric conditions accentuated, or added ambiguity, to his subject matter, he relied on studio models and photographs.

Tissot and his friend Edouard Manet traveled to Venice together in the fall of 1874, and Tissot bought Manet’s The Grand Canal, Venice (Blue Venice) on March 24, 1875 for 2,500 francs. Manet badly needed the income. Tissot hung the painting in his home in St. John’s Wood, London, and did his best to interest English dealers in Manet’s work, though the effect of shimmering water created by Manet’s quick, broken brushstrokes was quite different from Tissot’s style.

Tissot did not experiment with painting en plein air until after the mid-1870s, even then using landscape almost exclusively as a background for his narrative paintings. His most “Impressionistic” painting was A Civic Procession Descending Ludgate Hill, London (c. 1879). [See James Tissot’s “A Civic Procession” (c. 1879).]

PHD661 Henley Regatta, c.1877 by Tissot, James Jacques Joseph (1836-1902) oil on canvas 46.5x94.5 Private Collection French, out of copyright

Henley Regatta, 1877 (1877). Oil on canvas, 18.25 by 37.5 in. (46.3 by 95.2 cm). Private Collection.

Henley Regatta, Henley-on-Thames, in the 1890s. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

How puzzling, then, that Tissot would have painted the panoramic Henley Regatta, 1877. The view is from the bridge at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, looking downstream with the town on the left and the Leander Club on the right.

Founded in 1818, the Leander Club is the most prestigious and successful rowing club in the world; the Henley Royal Regatta first took place in 1839, and the first Clubhouse was built in 1897, a short walk from the finishing line. The Regatta remains a defining event of the English social season, now comprising nearly 300 races over five days.

Henley Regatta seemed to be Tissot’s only plein-air landscape, and his brushwork at its most free and fluid. Was it merely an experiment with the new painting style popular with his friends in Paris? Did Tissot then abandon this type of work due to a lack of market for it in England?

On the painting’s stretcher, Tissot inscribed the painting to the woman who apparently commissioned it, Mrs. Gebhard. By 1933, it belonged to N.C. Beechman, then Mrs. Emily Beechman by 1934. It was acquired by Walter Hutchinson, National Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes, by 1949. In 1951, it was sold at Christie’s, London for 900 guineas to the Leander Club.

Until the 1980s, scholars included Henley Regatta in catalogues of Tissot’s work, and it was last exhibited as a Tissot in London, Manchester and Paris in 1985.

In his 1986 book, Tissot, Victorian art expert Christopher Wood (1941 – 2009) commented that this painting was “so untypical of Tissot’s output that its authenticity, though well documented, has been questioned by some.” Indeed, not only were the style and subject matter quite different from Tissot’s, but the picture lacked Tissot’s signature.

After about 1986, Henley Regatta no longer was in the possession of the Leander Club. In 2013, the picture was sold at Christie’s, London – credited to American painter Frederick Vezin (1859 – 1933). Born in Philadelphia, Vezin studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in Germany from 1876 until 1883. Christie’s notes that by 1884, Vezin was exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery in London, and he exhibited in Liverpool and Manchester in 1885.

In 1897, Vezin’s uncle, an American actor living in London, wrote to English stage actor Sir Henry Irving that his nephew had a painting of Henley Regatta he wished to sell. Irving and Tissot were friends, and Tissot, who owned many works by other artists such as Degas, Manet and Pissarro, must have either purchased it from Vezin or later from Irving.

As a Vezin, Henley Regatta was expected to bring £60,000 – £80,000 ($91,000 – $120,000) but was sold for £109,875 ($166,021) (Premium).

Here’s an interesting work by Vezin, an etching of a port that is quite reminiscent of Tissot’s work, such as On the Thames (1876):

Port (c. 1890–1910), by Frederick Vezin. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot did paint some small oil studies of landscapes in a loose style for the background of other, finished works.

Blackfriars Bridge, London (oil on paper laid down on canvas, 13 by 16 in./33 by 40.6 cm) was sold at Christie’s, South Kensington in November, 2013 for $ 18,075 USD/£ 11,250 GBP (Premium).

The Hull of a Battle Ship, by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 16.5 by 12.25 in. (42 by 31.1 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Disembarking from HMS Victory (also called The Hull of a Battle Ship), was offered for sale at Christie’s, South Kensington in June, 2014, but failed to find a buyer at that time.

And, of course, Tissot did paint rowers at Henley – in his distinctive way.

Sur la Tamise, Return from Henley (also known as On the Thames, c. 1874), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 57.48 by 40.04 in. (146.00 by 101.70 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

James Tissot’s Weather Forecast

Girls to Float Your Boat, by James Tissot

James Tissot the Collector: His works by Degas, Manet & Pissarro

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

At the Salon in 1866, James Tissot exhibited Leaving the Confessional, a picture of a pretty, pious woman after she has made her confession. He was 30, and though he was living in student lodgings in the Latin Quarter, he had gained considerable recognition and success during his decade in Paris.

He began his career by exhibiting medieval scenes, and then scenes of sin and guilt from Goethe’s Faust, until the critics had had enough of his archaic pictures. At the Salon in 1864, Tissot exhibited his first paintings of self-confident, modern woman, Portrait of Mlle. L.L. and The Two Sisters. Both were highly original, praised by the critics and popular with the public. He had begun to hit his stride as an artist.

Leaving the Confessional (1865), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 45 ½ by 27 ¼ in. (115.4 by 69.2 cm). Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, U.K. (Photo: http://www.the-athenaeum.org)

Though neither Leaving the Confessional nor another painting he exhibited in 1866 earned particular acclaim, Tissot was elected hors concours – beyond the competition, or, in a class by himself: from now on, he could exhibit any painting he wished at the annual Salon, without submitting his work to the jury’s scrutiny. Only artists who had won three major awards at previous Salons were eligible to receive this honor. How did a 30-year old artist, who had won no medals following his honorable mention in 1861, rise to this height in only his seventh year of exhibiting?

In winning official endorsement from the government-run Salon during the Second Empire, could it be that the suave, ambitious and well-connected young artist was being rewarded for being reliably traditional in a time of open rebellion among artists of his age? Or, perhaps, it was simply a matter of his connections: in 1865, he found an entrée to the French aristocracy when he was commissioned to paint The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their children [René de Cassagne de Beaufort, Marquis de Miramon (1835-1882), his wife, née Thérèse Feuillant (1836-1912), and their first two children, Geneviève and Léon on the terrace of the château de Paulhac in Auvergne]. In 1866, Tissot fixed the beauty of the 30-year-old Marquise on canvas in another commission for her husband, Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née Thérèse Feuillant.

Fourteen years later, in 1880, Leaving the Confessional was offered at the Humphery Roberts sale, Christie’s, London, but it failed to find a buyer at £162.15s. It was with George C. Dobell by 1886 and was purchased as In Church from the Leicester Galleries in London in 1936 by the Southampton City Art Gallery through the Frederick William Smith Bequest Fund. It is not on display.

The Confessional (c. 1867), by James Tissot. Watercolor, 10 3/8 by 5 11/16 in. (26.4 by 14.4 cm). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

After he was made hors concors in 1866, the price for Tissot’s pictures skyrocketed. At 30, only ten years since his arrival in Paris, he decided to purchase property on the most prestigious new thoroughfare in the capital, the avenue de l’Impératrice (Empress Avenue, now avenue Foch). He would be living in grand style in his luxurious new villa there by late 1867 or early 1868.

Tissot painted a watercolor version of The Confessional, which is smaller but otherwise nearly identical to the original oil. It was commissioned in 1867 for 250 francs by American grain merchant and liquor wholesaler William Thompson Walters (1819 – 1894), through George A. Lucas (1824 – 1909) , the Baltimore, Maryland-born art dealer who had lived in Paris since 1857. Lucas was a friend of Tissot’s friend, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he made it his business to know every artist in Paris as he became the agent for wealthy Americans including banker William Wilson Corcoran (1798 – 1888), railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt I (1821 – 1885), streetcar developer Frank F. Frick (1857 – 1935), and William T. Walters. Lucas helped build Walters’ art collection by arranging for the purchase of pieces by Honoré Daumier, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Antoine-Louis Barye, Théodore Rousseau, and Paul Delaroche.

William T. Walters’ art collection formed the basis of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Upon his death, his son and fellow art collector Henry Walters (1848 – 1931), inherited his father’s collection and bequeathed it to the Walters Art Museum at his death. Tissot’s watercolor, The Confessional, has been included in several exhibitions over the years, most recently in 2005-2006, but it is not currently on view.

Dans l’église (In Church, c. 1865-69), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 29.13 by 21.26 in. (74 by 54 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

Tissot painted a third version, in oil, of a stylish woman outside a confessional. Dans l’église (In Church, c.1865-69) was sold as Le Confessional at Sotheby’s, New York in 1996 for $ 4,500 USD/£ 2,950 GBP. On July 15, 2015, it was offered for sale at Sotheby’s, London. Estimated to sell for between £ 100,000-150,000 GBP, it did not find a buyer at that time.

Paris c. 1865: The Giddy Life of Second Empire France

Ready and waiting: Tissot’s entrée, 1865

In a class by himself: Tissot beyond the competition, 1866

Degas’ portrait: Tissot, the man-about-town, 1867

On top of the world: Tissot, Millais & Alma-Tadema in 1867

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

James Tissot’s work often is compared to that of Belgian painter Alfred Stevens (1823 –1906).

Alfred Stevens, 1865. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Stevens was born in Brussels, where he received his first artistic training. His father was an art collector, and his maternal grandparents ran a café that was a gathering spot for politicians, writers, and artists. Stevens’ elder brother, Joseph, was a painter, and his younger brother, Arthur, became an art critic and a dealer based in Paris and Brussels who advised the King of the Belgians.

Stevens’ father died in 1837, when he was fourteen, and in 1844, he went to Paris. He stayed with a friend, the painter Florent Joseph Marie Willems (1823–1905) and attended the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He studied under Camille Roqueplan (1802/03 – 1855), a friend of his father.

Stevens first exhibited his work in 1851, with four historical paintings at the Salon in Brussels. The next year, he settled in Paris. In 1853, at 30, he made his debut at the Salon there with three paintings; he won a third-class medal for Ash-Wednesday Morning, which was purchased by the Ministry of Fine Arts for the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseilles. A year later, he also exhibited his first painting of modern life, The Painter and his Model [see below], at the Salon in Antwerp. In 1855, Stevens exhibited six paintings at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and won a second-class medal. Within a few years, he and his elder brother, Joseph, had become widely known and accepted in the Paris art world.

Lady at a Window, Feeding Birds (c. 1859), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

James Tissot, c. 1855-62. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Jacques Joseph Tissot’s parents were self-made, prosperous merchants and traders in the textile and fashion industry in Nantes, a bustling seaport on the banks of the Loire River, 35 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Tissot left Nantes at 19, in 1856 (i.e. before he turned 20 that October).

In the spring of 1857, he enrolled at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, though there is little documentation on the regularity of his attendance at classes, which included mathematics, anatomy and drawing, but not painting. Tissot studied painting independently under Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809 – 1864) and Louis Lamothe (1822 – 1869); both men had been students of the great Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 – 1867), and taught his principles.

In 1858, Stevens married Marie Blanc, who came from a wealthy Belgian family who were old friends of the Stevens family. Eugène Delacroix, whose paintings were among those that Stevens’ father collected, was one of the witnesses at the ceremony.

Promenade dans la neige, by Tissot

Within three years of his arrival in Paris, Tissot was ready to exhibit his work at the Salon. Competing with established artists, the 23-year-old Jacques Joseph Tissot – likely borrowing the name from a new friend, the American artist James McNeill Whistler – submitted his paintings to the jury under the name James Tissot. Two of Whistler’s prints were accepted by the jury for exhibition in the Salon of 1859, but his strikingly original oil painting, At the Piano, was rejected, while five of Tissot’s entries were accepted, one called Portrait de Mme T…, a small painting of his mother. There was another small portrait (Mlle H. de S…), and two designs for stained glass windows. The fifth painting was Promenade dans la Neige, which depicted a young medieval couple taking a winter’s walk and caused one critic to wonder if Tissot was amusing himself by placing student work in a frame. Of the medieval subject matter, the critic sniped at the young artist, “What are you, blind to the life around you?”

Faust and Marguerite (a study for The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 6.10 by 8.66 in. (15.50 by 22.00 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

However, Tissot and his painting, Le Recontre de Faust et de Marguerite (The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite) attracted the attention of the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Director-General of Museums, who purchased the painting by an order of July 17, 1860 on behalf of the government for the Luxembourg Museum for 5,000 francs. This was a huge honor for the very young artist, who exhibited the painting at the Salon in 1861.

In the 1860s, Stevens became immensely wealthy due his paintings of stylish and refined contemporary parisiennes, characteristically in luxurious private residences, but occasionally in religious settings.

Le bouquet (c. 1861), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

In Memoriam (c. 1861), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: http://www.the-athenaeum.org)

Les rameaux (Palm Sunday, c. 1862), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: Wikimedia)

Stevens exhibited Les rameaux (Palm Sunday, c. 1862), at the Paris Salon in 1863 (and again at the Exposition Universelle, the world’s fair, in Paris in 1867).

In 1863, when he was forty, Stevens received the Legion of Honor (Chevalier) from the Belgian government.

Princess Mathilde Bonaparte’s salon at 24 rue de Courcelles, Paris (1859), by Giraud Sébastien Charles (1819-1892). Musée national du château de Compiègne. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Among the places where Alfred Stevens and his brother, Joseph, socialized were the crowded literary and artistic receptions held weekly by Napoleon III’s cousin, Princess Mathilde. There, he may have met the young James Tissot; another of Tissot’s new friends, the writer Alphonse Daudet, (1840 – 1897), attended these soirées as well.

Tissot made a name for himself at the Salon in 1864, exhibiting portraits from modern life that were highly praised: The Two Sisters may have been a double portrait; the elder model reappears in Portrait of Mademoiselle L.L.

The Two Sisters (1863), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Portrait of Mademoiselle L.L. (1864), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Tissot’s work first showed the influence of Alfred Stevens at the Salon of 1866, with Le Confessional, which was described by a critic as “perhaps a little too much in the style of Alfred Stevens.”

Leaving the Confessional (1865), by James Tissot. (Photo: http://www.the-athenaeum.org)

Considering that Stevens began his career with a painting very much in the style of his friend, Florent Willems (compare the two paintings below), he must have enjoyed Tissot’s homage and certainly did not discourage it.

Painter at his easel shows his work to a girl (1852), by Florent Joseph Marie Willems (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Painter and his Model (1855), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot received a medal at the Salon of 1866 which made him hors concours, entitled to exhibit from now on without the jury’s scrutiny, and with this official recognition came financial success. Tissot now was 29 and Stevens was 43.

At the Salon in 1867, Tissot exhibited Jeune femme chantante à la orgue (Young Woman Singing to the Organ), depicting a fashionable woman singing a duet with a nun in a church’s organ loft and The Confidence. Both owe a debt to Alfred Stevens – although perhaps Stevens’ In the Country (c. 1867) [see below] owes something to Tissot’s The Two Sisters (1863).

The Confidence (1867), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

In the Country (c. 1867), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

At the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, Stevens exhibited eighteen paintings, including La dame en rose (Woman in Pink, 1866), and he won a first-class medal; he was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honor and invited to an Imperial ball at the Tuileries Palace. Tissot exhibited Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née Thérèse Feuillant, a stunning portrait of the wife of one of his new, aristocratic patrons. The 30-year-old Marquise wears a pink velvet peignoir while leaning on the mantel in her sitting room at her husband’s château in Auvergne with a stylish Japanese screen behind her.

Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née, Thérèse Feuillant (1866), by James Tissot. Digital image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Open Content Program.

La dame en rose (Woman in Pink, 1866), by Alfred Stevens. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Stevens’ La dame en rose, which depicts an elegantly gowned woman near a Japanese carved and painted table, admiring a doll from “her” collection, is often said to have inspired Tissot’s japonisme phase, along with Whistler’s paintings such as The Golden Screen (1864), The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks (completed 1864; exhibited at the Royal Academy that same year), The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (completed 1863-64; exhibited at the 1865 Salon), and The Little White Girl (completed 1864; exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865). But Tissot’s The Bather (c. 1864) pre-dates Stevens’ La dame en rose. [See “The three wonders of the world”: Tissot’s japonisme,1864-67.]

Tissot and Stevens moved in the same social circle, which included Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Frédéric Bazille, Berthe Morisot and James Whistler as well as Dutch painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema. But while Tissot is said to have preferred quiet evenings with his friends in his splendid new home on the chic avenue de l’Impératrice (now avenue Foch), Stevens often gathered with friends at the Café Guerbois. In addition, he and his wife held regular receptions at their home on Wednesdays; weekly soirées were held by Madame Manet (Edouard’s formidable mother) on Tuesdays, Madame Morisot (Berthe’s formidable mother) on Thursdays, and Princesse Mathilde on Fridays.

Tissot attended Stevens’ receptions, as he noted in early 1868 in a hurried message to Degas scribbled on the back of a used envelope when he found Degas away from his studio: “I shall be at Stevens’ house tonight.”

Both James Tissot and Alfred Stevens had grown wealthy depicting the elegance of Parisian life during France’s Second Empire. But their comfortable lives were about to change.

Related posts:

Was James Tissot a Plagiarist?

More “Plagiarists”: Tissot’s friends Manet, Degas, Whistler & Others

“The three wonders of the world”: Tissot’s japonisme,1864-67

Paris c. 1865: The Giddy Life of Second Empire France

In a class by himself: Tissot beyond the competition, 1866

Degas’ portrait: Tissot, the man-about-town, 1867

On top of the world: Tissot, Millais & Alma-Tadema in 1867

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

Enjoying a view of the Arc de Triomphe

One hundred seventy-nine years ago today, French painter James Tissot was born. And three years ago, I published my book, The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot.

I’m just back from a two-week vacation in Paris, and it was Paradise. I’d been there twice before — a long time ago, when I was in college studying art history — and after I’d studied French for a decade. This was my first visit since then, and with my conversational French gradually returning, I played tour guide for my husband, who’s never seen Paris. We went everywhere and did everything, and I’m still jet-lagged, but I made a point of going to numerous places associated with James Tissot, and I want to share some sights with you via my personal photos.

At the Opéra Garnier, built 1861-75.

By 1865, Emperor Napoleon III’s majestic and “revolution-proof” vision to modernize Paris had been methodically implemented for twelve years by his préfet, Baron Haussmann. James Tissot, an art student from the seaside port of Nantes, had lived in the Latin Quarter and painted in the capital since 1856 — coming of age during this transformation. The economy was booming as overcrowded medieval buildings were demolished, hills were leveled, bridges were constructed, and narrow, winding streets were replaced with straight, broad, tree-lined avenues extending to the western suburbs where fields of cabbages once grew.

When the Arc de Triomphe was completed in 1836, five streets radiated from it; Haussmann added seven more and a traffic round-about, and it became known as Place de l’Etoile (Place of the Star). In an effort to create a clean and progressive metropolis, rows of neo-classical apartment buildings were constructed with shops at street level, as well as a breathtakingly beautiful new opera house, the Opéra Garnier.

Opéra Garnier, Paris. (Photo: Wikimedia.org, because I couldn’t get a shot that was not obstructed by tour buses!)

Rue Bonaparte [near Église de St-Germain-des-Prés], where Tissot rented an apartment from about 1860 to 1867 at no. 39. Writer Alphonse Daudet (1840 – 1897) lived in the room below him and recorded his own disappointment that the house later was demolished.

The entrance to the private cul-de-sac [now Square de l’avenue Foch], where James Tissot’s opulent Paris villa once stood.

One of the twelve streets radiating from l’Etoile was the avenue de l’Impératrice [Empress Avenue – now avenue Foch]. It was extra-wide, with separate lanes for pedestrians, horseback riders and carriage traffic. Exclusively residential, the avenue de l’Impératrice was flanked by broad, grassy slopes planted with colorful flowers. The fashionable Parisians who promenaded or showed off their splendid horses there frequently glimpsed Imperial soldiers on their impressive grey mounts, Napoleon III’s carriage with his green-and-gold liveried footman, or the Empress Eugénie and her friends in an open barouche heading for the lush Bois de Boulogne to boat on the lakes, sip wine at the Swiss Chalet there, and enjoy picnics and galas. The avenue de l’Impératrice was, like London’s Hyde Park, the place to see and be seen. [The grassy verges in this still-prestigious neighborhood are rather scruffy today but serve as parks for local families with children and dogs.]

Between 1850 and 1870, the population of Paris nearly doubled as the provincial population flocked to the capital. James Tissot was part of the rise of a wealthy urban class.

The Musée d’Ennery at no. 59, avenue Foch.

By late 1867 or early 1868, he moved into the sumptuous mansion he had built in a cul-de-sac off the west end of this avenue, Square de l’avenue de l’Impératrice [now Square de l’avenue Foch, with a gated entrance]. When Tissot visited London in 1862, he had particularly admired English buildings and gardens. He built his Paris home as “an English-style villa,” high on a basement ground floor, with a first floor and a second floor with a terrace above, a courtyard and small garden.

Tissot’s villa no longer stands, but just across avenue Foch at no. 59, the Musée d’Ennery operates in an 1875 townhouse that gives some idea of the grandeur of the era’s homes there.

Rue St. Julien-le-Pauvre, on the Left Bank, with the medieval church at the end.

As I walked the old narrow, crooked and crowded streets of the Left Bank where Tissot started his career in Paris and the wide, new, straight avenues of the Right Bank where he lived after he had “arrived,” I was struck by his journey from striving student to wealthy and established Second Empire painter living in luxury and privacy.

One of the most beautiful and serene places we visited in Paris was the Parc Monceau with its classical colonnade — which Tissot copied in cast iron in the garden of his home in London, upon his move there following the Franco-Prussian War and its bloody aftermath, the Commune.

Parc Monceau, Paris.

Tissot used his graceful colonnade as a backdrop for paintings including Quarrelling (c. 1874), The Convalescent (c. 1876), Holyday (c. 1876), and The Hammock (1879).

Quarrelling (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

The Convalescent (c. 1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas; 30.2 by 39.06 in. (76.7 by 99.2 cm). Museums Sheffield. Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in “The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot” by Lucy Paquette © 2012.

The Convalescent (c. 1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Museums Sheffield. Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in “The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot” by Lucy Paquette © 2012.

Holyday (c. 1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Tate Britain, London. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Hammock (1879), by James Tissot. 50 in./127 cm. by 30 in./76.20 cm. Image courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in "The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot," © 2012 by Lucy Paquette

The Hammock (1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Image courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in “The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot,” © 2012 by Lucy Paquette

The handsome chestnut trees that Tissot painted from his London garden were evident throughout Paris, and their autumnal leaves are exactly as he portrayed them.

The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July, 1870 brought an abrupt halt to this glamorous and leisured life.

Memorial plaque at the Arc de Triomphe.

The artillery encamped in the Tuileries garden in late September 1870 by Henri Brunner-Lacoste and Alfred Decaen. Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

You can see James Tissot’s paintings in museums all over the world, but many of the most gorgeous works he produced in Second Empire Paris are showcased at the Musée d’Orsay, including The Two Sisters (1863), Portrait of the Marquis and Marchioness of Miramon and their children (1865), and The Circle of the Rue Royale (1868).

The collection also includes paintings that were not on display during my visit, such as The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite (1860) and Portrait of Miss L. L. (1864). A rather sad portrait of Kathleen Newton, Tissot’s young mistress, The Dreamer (or, Summer Evening, c. 1876) was on display, as well as the shimmering, idealized portrait of Mrs. Newton that Tissot painted four years before her death of tuberculosis in 1882, Evening (Le Bal, c. 1878).

The Dreamer (or, Summer Evening, c. 1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay.

Le bal (Evening, 1878), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

I also was able to see the controversial new exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, “Splendor and Misery: Pictures of Prostitution, 1850-1910.” It is huge — all-encompassing, to put it mildly, as it explores the underside of Paris life during these decades. Tissot’s The Shop Girl from his series, La Femme à Paris (Women of Paris) is included, and it was a rare chance to see it up close (though in a darkened room). It is vibrant and beautifully detailed, with a lot going on — the idea being, the goods on display in the shop are not the only things for sale.

Note: “Splendor and Misery” runs until January 17, 2016. It will then move to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.

The Shop Girl (1883 – 1885), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

C’est tout! Thanks for taking this little tour of Tissot’s Paris with me, and if you enjoy this blog, you’ll be captivated by The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot. (Amazon offers free apps for your laptop, smartphone and tablet if you don’t have a Kindle — see the information below!) Read reviews.

Paris c. 1865: The Giddy Life of Second Empire France

The high life, 1868: Tissot, his villa & The Circle of the Rue Royale

A spotlight on Tissot at the Met’s “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity”

A visit to James Tissot’s house & Kathleen Newton’s grave

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.