The Hammock

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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

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/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.

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.

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.

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 (b. 1931), Michael Wentworth (1938 – 2002), and Willard E. Misfeldt (b. 1930), 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.

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.

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.