As of January, 2015, there are twenty-six oil paintings by James Tissot in public art collections in the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico, and seventeen of them are registered with the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal (NEPIP).

The Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal (NEPIP) at http://www.nepip.org/ provides a searchable online registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era (1933-1945). NEPIP is a single point of contact to 175 U.S. museums whose staff have come to recognize, since the late 1990s, that objects looted, seized, and illegally sold during the Nazi era may have made their way into U.S. museum collections in the decades since the war. NEPIP was established in 2006 by the American Alliance of Museums in Arlington, Virginia; its website is http://www.aam-us.org/.

NEPIP contains information only about objects that:

were created before 1946 and acquired after 1932,
underwent a change of ownership between 1932 and 1946, and
were or might reasonably be thought to have been in Continental Europe between those dates.

An object’s inclusion on NEPIP does not indicate that the works are suspect, but that its provenance during the Nazi era is unclear or not yet fully documented.

The seventeen Tissot oils registered with the NEPIP from public collections worldwide are listed below with images and the information on the provenance, or history of ownership, that is known.

Promenade on the Ramparts (1864)

Tissot’s Promenade on the Ramparts (1864) [oil on board; 52 by 44.4 cm] was gifted to Stanford University in California in 1968, by petroleum geologist Robert Sumpf (1917 – 1994), who had earned his B.S. in geology there in 1941.

Gentleman in a Railway Carriage

Gentleman in a Railway Carriage (1872)

Tissot’s 1872 image of the modern commuter, Gentleman in a Railway Carriage [24 15/16 by 16 15/16 in./63.30 by 43.00 cm], was purchased for The Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts by the Alexander and Caroline Murdock de Witt Fund in 1965.

London Visitors

London Visitors (c. 1874)

Tissot exhibited London Visitors (c. 1874) [63 by 44.9 in./160 by 114 cm] at the Royal Academy in 1874.

The painting once had been in the collections of Mrs. Bannister; M. Bernard, London; and Robert Frank, London, and it was exhibited in 1937 at the Leicester Galleries in London.

In 1951, London Visitors was acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek (1877)

Hide and Seek (1877) was sold at Christie’s, London in 1957 for $ 2,379 USD/£ 850 GBP, then at Sotheby’s, London in 1963 for $ 6,159 USD/£ 2,200 GBP. Mrs. C. Behr, London, owned it until at least 1967, after which it belonged to Julian Spiro, Esq. In 1976, Christie’s, London sold the painting for $ 33,002 USD/£ 20,000 GBP. Two years later, Hide and Seek was purchased from the Herman Shickman Gallery in New York with the Chester Dale Fund by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

July (Speciman of a Portrait

July (Speciman of a Portrait, 1878)

Tissot exhibited July (Speciman of a Portrait) along with nine other paintings at London’s Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, the year it was painted.

At some point, another artist painted a frizzy red hairstyle (probably considered more up-to-date) on Kathleen Newton.

The painting was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio by the bequest of Noah L. Butkin in 1980.

The Dance of Death (1860)

The Dance of Death was exhibited at the Salon in 1861 under the title, Voie des fleurs, voie des pleurs (Path of Flowers, Way of Tears). Tissot offered this to a collector at what he considered (or shrewdly pretended to consider) a low price of 5,000 francs. In a private collection in Philadelphia until it was purchased from Julius H. Weitzner (1896 – 1986), a leading dealer in Old Master paintings in New York and London, by the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence in 1954, it measures 14 5/8 by 48 3/16 by 1 1/2 in., or 37.1 by 122.4 by 3.8 cm.

The Women of the Chariots

Women of Paris: The Women of the Chariots (also called The Circus, 1883-1885)

The Women of the Chariots, also called The Circus, was exhibited in Paris in 1885 and in London in 1886 as Ladies of the Cars.

It is the second in the “La Femme à Paris” (“Women of Paris”) series, painted sometime before mid-1884.

The Women of the Chariots [57 ½ by 39 5/8”/146 by 100.65 cm], was sold by Julius Weitzner to Walter Lowry, who gifted it to the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, in 1958.

The Two Friends (c. 1881) and Interior of the Louvre (c. 1883-85).

In the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, but not on public display, are Tissot’s The Two Friends and In the Louvre.

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (1885)

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover is another painting in Tissot’s “La Femme à Paris” series.

The year it was painted, 1885, it was exhibited from April 19 – June 15 as part of the series of fifteen canvases at Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris, and in 1886, it was included with the series exhibited at Arthur Tooth and Son, London.

By 1889, The Circus Lover was in the possession of E. Simon, who sold it on March 30, 1889 at Christie’s, London, to Mr. King. It later was with the Goupil Gallery, London; there is a label on the reverse of the stretcher from William Marchant and Co., The Goupil Gallery, London. The painting next belonged to The Hon. Mrs. Arthur Henniker (Inger Margueretta Hutchinson) (d. 1923), Suffolk, England. By 1955, it was in the possession of Gerald M. Fitzgerald, London, who lent the painting to the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, that May for “James Tissot (1836-1902): An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings.” Mr. Fitzgerald sold The Circus Lover on July 26, 1957 at Christie’s, London, to Mr. Lloyd, director of Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd., London, for $ 3,219 USD/£ 1,150 GBP, and on February 13, 1958, Marlborough Fine Art sold the to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts for $ 5,000 as Amateur Circus.

The Emigrants (1873)

From information I have pieced together from various Tissot scholars, there were two versions of The Emigrants (1873), and Tissot exhibited either the original or the replica at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879.

The original was a large oil on canvas, measuring 28 by 40 in./71.12 by 101.6 cm. This painting was once in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, but was somehow damaged and cut down in height. It is considered lost.

It is now known only through the replica that Tissot produced. This smaller painting, an oil on panel also called The Emigrants (1873), measures 15.75 by 7.5 in./40.2 by 19 cm). As of at least 1984, it was in a private collection in New York. However, in 1991, it was gifted to the Speed Museum by Mr. and Mrs. W. Armin Willig. [Winston] Armin Willig (1912 – 1992) was an alumnus of the University of Louisville, and he became a prominent businessman in the area. He was appointed by the Governor of Kentucky to the post of Jefferson County judge after the incumbent County judge was killed in an automobile accident, serving from September 29, 1969 until January 4, 1970.

At the Falcon Inn, Waiting for the Ferry (1874)

At the Falcon Inn (Waiting for the Ferry

According to my research, Tissot’s Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern (1874) 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, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was passed on to his son, Dr. Wilfred Hall, of Newcastle. His daughter, Mrs. Edward Reeves of Winchester in Hampshire, sold the painting at Christie’s, London in 1954 to the John Nicholson Gallery, New York for $ 4,339 (£ 1550).

In 1955, Mrs. Blakemore Wheeler [1887 – 1964, née Minnie Norton Marvin] of Louisville, Kentucky, who had been on the board of the Speed Museum since 1939, began collecting art. The daughter of a wealthy Louisville physician on the faculty of the University of Louisville Medical School and the wife of a prominent Realtor, she had no children. By 1957, she owned this version of Tissot’s Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern, and in 1963, she gifted it to the Speed.

Portrait of Eugène Coppens de Fontenay (1867)

Portrait of Eugène Coppens de Fontenay (1867), by James Tissot. 27 by 15 in. (68.58 by 38.10 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Lucy Paquette.

In 1867, James Tissot painted Portrait of Eugène Coppens de Fontenay (1824 –1896), the president of the exclusive Jockey Club in Paris. Married in 1853, Eugène Aimé Nicolas Coppens de Fontenay had three children.

His daughter, Marthe Jeanne-Marie (1854 – 1898) , married Henri, Comte de Meffray [Henri Meffray de Césargues (1846-1927)] in 1876; the couple had two children and at least three grandchildren. Eugène’s second daughter, Françoise, was born in 1855, but there is no further information on her.

His son, Robert Coppens de Fontenay (1858 – 1925), became a diplomat with the Belgian legation. He married in 1899 and had a son, Jacques Coppens de Fontenay (c. 1900- 1991), who sold the portrait at Christie’s, London, on March 5, 1971 to Holstein for $ 4,352 USD/£ 1,800 GBP. The picture was with the Herman Shickman Gallery, New York, by October 1971 and was purchased by the City of Philadelphia with the W. P. Wilstach Fund on March 14, 1972.

Young Women Looking at Japanese Articles (1869)

In 1869, Tissot assimilated his expanding collection of Japanese art and objets into elegant compositions in three similar paintings featuring young women looking at Japanese objects.

By the 1930s, the version below was hanging in an interior decorator’s store on Third Street in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was purchased by Dr. Henry M. Goodyear; he and his wife gifted Tissot’s picture to the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1984.

Tea

Tea (1872)

Tea (1872) [oil on wood, 26 by 18 7/8 in./66 by 47.9 cm] was in a private collection in Rome, Italy in 1968.

It 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, Mrs. Wrightsman owned it until 1998, when she gifted it to the Met.

Spring Morning (c. 1875)

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, on March 23, 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.

In Full Sunlight (En plein soleil, c. 1881)

In Full Sunshine

In Full Sunlight (En plein soleil, c. 1881) [oil on wood, 9 3/4 by 13 7/8 in./24.8 by 35.2 cm] was with Lenz Fine Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, until 1976, when it was sold to Williams and Son, London. That firm sold to the painting to Stair Sainty Gallery, London, where it was purchased in 1976 by Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol (1915 – 1985), London. In 1983, the Marquess sold it back to Stair Sainty, where it was purchased that year by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York.

Mrs. Charles Wrightsman kept the picture until 2006, when she gifted it to the Met.

If you have questions about any of these Tissot paintings, please contact the participating museum.

Related posts:

Tissot in the U.S.: The West

Tissot in the U.S.: The Midwest

Tissot in the U.S.: The Speed Museum, Kentucky

Tissot in the U.S.: The Mid-Atlantic

Tissot in the U.S.: New York

Tissot in the U.S.: New England

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.

James Tissot, the son of a draper and a hat manufacturer, was so skilled a painter of women’s fashions that he receives little notice for his depictions of men’s fashions.

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 credit: Wikimedia.org)

In The Marquis and the Marchioness of Miramon and their children, René de Cassagne de Beaufort, marquis de Miramon (1835 – 1882) and his wife, née Thérèse Feuillant (1836 – 1912), pose with their first two children, Geneviève (1863 – 1924) and Léon (1861 – 1884) on the terrace of the château de Paulhac in Auvergne.

The Marquis is elegant and at his ease in loosely-cut sack coat with sloping shoulders and balloon sleeves (cut very wide at the elbows and narrowing at the shoulder and cuff) that were influenced by the Oriental vogue. His left lapel is accented with the ultimate sartorial touch — a rose, this one in a delicate pink.

The fact that his riding breeches are cut from the same grey fabric as the coat was a novelty, considered appropriate only in domestic settings – amounting to a sporty lounge suit. His tall leather riding boots, with their marvelous row of spherical buttons, echo the spherical cuff link on his left wrist.

His white linen or cotton shirt has a turnover collar, and his deep blue patterned silk necktie is tied in a loose knot and appears to be fastened with a pearl stickpin. His light-colored, collarless waistcoat is cut high at the top and straight across the bottom, adorned with a gold watch chain. The informal dress and poses of his subjects, along with the outdoor setting, gave Tissot’s family portrait a British flair that was quite modern at the time.

At the same time, the Marquis de Miramon epitomizes Baudelaire’s 1863 theory of true dandyism as representing “perfection in dress” and “the best way to appear distinguished.” The accomplished gentleman was always dressed correctly for any occasion, public or private.

The Marquis’ son, Léon, at four, also is perfectly turned out, though more flamboyant. He wears a lace-trimmed white shirt, and his buff-colored coat and matching waistcoat are adorned with black scrollwork (soutache) embroidery, fashionable in the mid-1860s (and similar to that worn by the central figure in Monet’s monumental 1866 painting, Women in the Garden). He would be out of skirts, and wearing a jacket and trousers, by the time he reached age 5 or 6. Léon’s black leather shoes, paired with black and grey diced Scottish kilt hose, sport silver buckles. On his chair, his low-crowned straw helmet, its color an exact match with his coat and waistcoat, is made splendid by a black velvet ribbon band and rosette with a bejeweled silver ornament.

Portrait of Eugène Coppens de Fontenay (1867), by James Tissot. 27 by 15 in. (68.58 by 38.10 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Lucy Paquette.

In 1867, Tissot painted 43-year-old Eugène Coppens de Fontenay (1824 –1896), the president of the exclusive Jockey Club in Paris. Married in 1853, Eugène Aimé Nicolas Coppens de Fontenay had three children.

In this distinctive portrait, he is wearing wearing a white shirt with a turnover collar and a bright blue necktie. His black sack coat has sloping shoulders and is paired with a high-cut, collarless waistcoat in pristine white.

Fontenay carries a top hat, tan kid gloves, and a walking stick, proper accouterments for day wear. His trousers, in a brown fabric contrasting with his coat, are slim-fitting and have a substantial break. He wears black leather ankle boots (probably with elastic sides) and, like the Marquis de Miramon, sports a dapper waxed mustache.

The Jockey Club began as a meeting place for members of the Society for the Encouragement of Horse Racing in France, founded in November 1833 by fourteen Anglophiles under the age of 30, who were aristocrats or the scions of financiers and horse breeders. The Jockey Club was founded in June 1834, in luxurious, wood-paneled quarters on the corner of rue Grange-Batelière, just north of the intersection between Boulevard Haussmann, Boulevard des Italiens, and Boulevard Poissonnière. All fashionable men aspired to belong to this bastion of male extravagance. By 1864, it had 650 titled and wealthy members, who voted with white or black balls; six white balls were required for admission.

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

In 1868, Tissot painted a dozen of the most fashionable men in Paris in a group portrait, The Circle of the Rue Royale (1868). Members of this 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 (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).

Seated on the balustrade, Count Alfred de La Tour Maubourg, at age 34, wears a black sack coat with only the top button fastened, in what was called “English” or “Richmond-style” buttoning. He wears it over loose, light-grey trousers, a white waistcoat over a white shirt with a turnover collar, and a blue cravat.

Lounging next to him, the Marquis Alfred du Lau d’Allemans, age 35, wears a black sack coat over loose, dark-grey trousers, a white shirt with a turnover collar, and a black patterned cravat, while showing off his high-cut golden silk waistcoat.

Count Étienne de Ganay, in the black silk top hat, is more formally dressed in a morning suit with a high stand-up shirt collar under his tan overcoat. His low-cut, shawl-collared waistcoat displays his pristine white shirt, with its tight-fitting, stand-up collar. At 35, he wears a golden watch chain, and he carries a cane, as if soon to depart on business. He has an extraordinary combination of a blonde handlebar mustache and prodigious brown whiskers.

Count Julien de Rochechouart, age 40, is seated, with a cigarette in his right hand. His stylish black and white hounds tooth trousers echo the colors of the Dalmatian at his feet, while the solid black of his buttoned frock coat is relieved by his casually fluffed white pocket square – and his massive ginger beard. His black leather ankle boots have a high polish.

Captain Coleraine Vansittart, standing behind him with slicked-down hair, was British. He sports a brown sack coat buttoned Richmond-style and cut sharply away from the top button to show a considerable amount of the matching waistcoat. At 35, he pairs these items with grey trousers and a white shirt with a high, starched, stand-up collar. He seems to be wearing a white necktie. His pose, with his left hand tucked into his pocket, exposes the black-and-white gingham lining of the coat.

Marquis René de Miramon, age 33, is seated on the sofa, wearing a black silk top hat and holding tan gloves and an umbrella. Dressed more formally than in his 1865 family portrait, he wears his black morning coat with light-grey trousers and black leather ankle boots. Peeking out under his white turnover collar is a bright blue necktie.

Baron Rodolphe Hottinguer, a banking heir who at 33 won the right to keep the painting of the group, sits on the other side of the sofa. In contrast to his notable ginger-colored hair and impressive mutton-chop sideburns, he is quietly dressed in a black frock coat paired with a collared, high-cut black vest and light-grey trousers. He has neatly folded and tied a dark-colored square scarf over his stand-up white shirt collar

Marquis Charles-Alexandre de Ganay * sits in profile in a beautifully-carved chair, showing off the brown spats buttoned over his black ankle boots. Elegantly at his ease, he wears a black morning coat and blue, red and black plaid trousers with a white turnover collar and a light-grey patterned necktie.

[Note: The Musée d’Orsay identifies this figure simply as Marquis de Ganay, though other sources identify him as Marquis Charles-Alexandre de Ganay (1803–1881), who was the father of the third sitter from the left, Count Étienne de Ganay (1833-1903). It is not possible that the young blonde man seated in the center of Tissot’s portrait is 65 years old.]

Baron Gaston de Saint-Maurice, age 37, is seated on the arm of the sofa, wearing a black silk top hat. His black frock coat is buttoned over his high-cut white waistcoat, and the white slashes are echoed in the tidy white silk square folded into his breast pocket. His bright blue necktie is fastened with a pearl stickpin, and he wears dark grey trousers.

Prince Edmond de Polignac, at 34, lounges dreamily in the upholstered armchair, his left forefinger holding a place in his book about Louis XVII. His flamboyant, black-and-white patterned trousers are in high style. He wears a black morning coat, a high-cut white waistcoat with a shawl collar, and a blue necktie which may be fastened with a pearl stickpin. He also appears to have white or grey pearl cuff links. His grey top hat, grey gloves, and cane are stowed beneath him.

Marquis Gaston de Galliffet, greying at the temples at 38, wears a black sack coat over slim-fitting black trousers cut from the same fabric – a sporty, fashion-forward lounge suit. He pairs a blue-patterned necktie with his turnover shirt collar. Is that his extinguished cigar, crushed on the floor to the left of his black leather ankle boots? In three years, Galliffet would become known as “le marquis aux talons rouges” [Marquis Red Heels] for his brutal executions of Communards in Paris. This was a clever reference to both his brutality in glorying in the blood of his victims as well as Galliffet’s dandyism – perhaps outré – since showy red heels had been a male fashion trend from at least 1697 to 1785, but not since.

Louis XIV (The Sun King, who ruled France from 1643 until his death in 1715) declared that only those in the royal favor were allowed the privilege of having red heels on their shoes, and by Marie Antoinette’s time, red heels had become a hated symbol of the monarchy. British historian Philip Mansel observed that the bright heels indicated nobles did not dirty their shoes – but were “always ready to crush the enemies of the state at their feet.” [See Louis XIV’s 1701 portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud, which features the red-heeled shoes.]

Charles Haas, age 35, stands, framed in the high doorway with his cane held jauntily over his right shoulder. He wears a tan coat over his brown sack coat and matching brown, high-cut waistcoat, with finely-checked light-grey trousers. He sports brown spats buttoned over his black leather ankle boots, and he is wearing tan kid gloves. He has loosened the high, starched, winged stand-up collar on his white shirt, and he wears a bright blue necktie fastened with a pearl stickpin. The fluffed pocket square in the breast pocket of his sack coat lends another white note.

Haas, a Jewish art collector and critic, was one of the models for Proust’s character, Charles Swann, in In Search of Lost Time (1913). Haas had been blackballed from the Jockey Club four times until his heroism during the Franco-Prussian War earned his entry. He was the lover, and later the friend, of Sarah Bernhardt. Haas’ gleaming, flared, light-grey silk top hat was custom-made for him by Delion, who made it for only a half-dozen other elite clients.

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

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.

“Our industrial and artistic creations can perish, our morals and our fashions can fall into obscurity, but a picture by M. Tissot will be enough for archaeologists of the future to reconstitute our epoch.”

~ L’Artiste, 1869, in a review of Tissot’s painting, Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects, exhibited at the Paris Salon

It was not just women’s fashions that James Tissot painted with the precision of a photojournalist recording the sights around him; he also recorded military men in detail, giving us a glimpse of life in his time.

Beating the Retreat in the Tuileries Gardens (1867), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

This painting, which Tissot exhibited at the Salon in 1868, features four Imperial Guardsmen: three Hussars and a Zouave.

In 1830, numerous members of the fierce Kabyli tribe of Zouaoua living in the rocky hills of Algeria and Morocco volunteered to fight with the French colonial army. In 1852, Napoléon III, Emperor of the French, ordered the Zouaves – by that time native Frenchmen stationed in Algeria – restructured into three regiments of the regular French Army. The Zouave regiments served in The Crimean War (1853 – 1856). On December 23, 1854, the Emperor created a fourth regiment, the Zouaves of the Imperial Guard; detachments from the Zouave regiments serving in the Crimea were brought together on March 15, 1855 to form it. They were based at Saint-Cloud until 1857, and subsequently at Versailles. The Zouaves of the Imperial Guard served through all the campaigns of the Second Empire, including the Franco-Austrian War of 1859 and the Mexican Intervention (1864-66).

The Zouaves earned a reputation for reckless bravery, and they became famous for their distinctive uniforms, which included a short, collarless, open-fronted jacket, baggy trousers, sashes and Oriental head gear, modelled on Algerian native dress. The Zouave drummer in Tissot’s painting wears a blue uniform with gold trim, leggings, a white turban with a golden tassel, and white spats over his black leather shoes.

The Hussars, in their smartly-tailored blue, red and gold uniforms, are possibly from the 9^th Hussar Regiment, formed in 1852 as the régiment des guides. In 1854, it became the régiment des guides de la Garde Impériale.

Frederick Burnaby (1870), by James Tissot. National Portrait Gallery, London. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot painted this portrait of Frederick Gustavus (“Gus”) Burnaby (1842-1885) sometime between the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Burnaby, a captain in the Royal Horse Guards (3rd Household Cavalry, “the Blues”), was 27 or 28 years old and mingled with the Prince of Wales’ social set.

He is shown off duty, smoking and conversing in his “undress” uniform of a dark blue coat with a standing collar, scarlet and gold trimmings, a white cross-belt, and long blue trousers with red stripes sewn along the outer seams. He wears highly polished black leather shoes, and his military cap is beside him. Behind him, his full-dress uniform is laid out: a plumed silver-gilt helmet, frogged cape, polished metal cuirass (breastplate), and thigh-high black riding boots.

The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Musée Nationale du Château de Compiègne, France. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874) depicts the exiled French Empress, living outside London after the collapse of the Second Empire, and her son, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1856-1879), the Prince Impérial. The only child of Napoléon III of France, he was accepted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1872 and is pictured in the uniform of a Woolwich cadet. He wears a jacket with a standing collar, trimmed in red and gold with a single row of brass buttons, long trousers, and a round cap with a gold band.

Upon his father’s death in January, 1873, Bonapartists proclaimed him Napoléon IV. When the Prince turned 18 in 1874, thousands of French citizens traveled to fête him in Chislehurst: the railway station flew the tricolour of France, while in the main waiting room an inscription, wreathed in laurels and violets, read, “Vive le Prince Impérial 16 mars, 1874.” He made a speech to rapturous crowds.

The Prince Impérial proved himself an excellent student at Woolwich – seventh in a class of thirty-four – and graduated in early 1875.

In The Gentleman Cadet: His Career and Adventures at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich: a Tale of the Past (1875), Alfred Wilks Drayson (I827-1901) recalled, “It was ten days after joining the Academy that I first obtained my uniform, and I can recall even now the secret pride with which I first put it on. I felt now that I really had commenced the career of a soldier…There seemed to come upon me a feeling of responsibility as the coat came on me, and I made up my mind not to disgrace my cloth.”

Louis-Napoléon became friends with members of the British Royal Family, especially with the Prince of Wales. He was advised not to join the regular service of the British Government, and therefore was not commissioned as an officer. He was killed in 1879, at age 23, in the Zulu War.

Reading the News (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Reading the News (c. 1874) is an enigmatic painting featuring a lovely woman wearing a yachting costume, at a tea table with a Chelsea pensioner in his navy blue “undress,” or casual uniform. What is a Chelsea pensioner? He (or, since 2009 – she) is one of about 300 residents at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home and nursing home for former members of the British Army located on Royal Hospital Road in west London. They surrender their army pension and live within the Royal Hospital, free of financial worries while enjoying comradeship, full medical care and catering services, and a wide range of activities including charitable causes. Chelsea pensioners may come and go from the Royal Hospital as they please, and they are permitted to wear civilian clothing when they travel. But within the Hospital, and in the surrounding area, they wear the blue uniform (the RH on the man’s hat is for Royal Hospital). For ceremonial occasions, they wear distinctive scarlet coats and black tricorne hats.

The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth), c. 1876, by James Tissot. Tate, London. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Though the male in this painting is a minor character who could have been any man from a dandy in a lounge suit to an older figure in a frock coat, Tissot lends added interest to The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth) by depicting him as a low-ranking naval officer. Looking rather off-duty here, the young ensign slouches over the rail with his cap pushed back – considering the company on this hot summer day, perhaps his brow is sweaty?

Sans dot (Without a Dowry, 1883-85), by James Tissot. [One of a series of fifteen large-scale pictures called La Femme à Paris (The Parisian Woman).] Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In the top left corner of Sans dot (Without a Dowry), Tissot painted two handsome French officers – for interest, and as possible objects of a new romance for the beautiful young widow in the foreground.

Over a dozen years after the fall of the Second Empire, these officers wear finely-tailored uniforms reminiscent of Captain Burnaby’s from 1870. The officer on the left wears a double-breasted blue coat with a red- and gold-trimmed standing collar, button-down shoulder straps, triple rows of brass buttons, and red cuffs with gold embroidery. Under this, he wears a high-collared white shirt. His long blue trousers have a red stripe down the outer seams, and his blue képi (cap) has a dark blue band and a black leather visor. He wears pristine white gloves.

The officer on the right wears a blue coat with a high red collar and red cuffs with gold embroidery. In the back, its double vent is embellished with brass buttons. His high-collared white shirt peeks out as well. His long red trousers have a blue stripe sewn down the outer seams. His red képi has a blue band, and he also wears white gloves – along with pince–nez. The gold braid trim on the shoulders of his coat indicates his higher rank.

In these paintings, Tissot painted a brief survey of military men of his era, from a young cadet to a retired member of the British army, from snappy officers to slouching ensigns, and from the exotic to the everyday.

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.

By the 1870s, fashions for Victorian men were transitioning toward styles familiar to us today. The ubiquitous, long and skirted black frock coat, and the morning coat (cut away to feature tails only), while still very much de rigueur for business, gradually were being supplanted by trendy styles. The sack coat (a loosely-cut, thigh-length coat with no waist seam) and the lounge suit (in which the sack coat and trousers were cut from the same fabric), would become the men’s business suit of our modern age. Ankle boots and laced shoes had been replacing full boots since 1850. And in this decade, the straw boater hat was adopted by rowing enthusiasts for summer – as depicted by Impressionist painters in France.

The elegant gentlemen of the 1870s incorporated the latest styles in dressing for leisure time, and Tissot captured these trends in his paintings.

Autumn on the Thames, Nuneham Courtney (c. 1871-72), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In Autumn on the Thames, Nuneham Courtney (c. 1871-72), the gentleman’s suit coat is deep blue, and we can see from his cuffs that he wears a crisp white shirt under it, accented with a black tie. His straw boater seems slightly crumpled, but his ginger whiskers are so immaculately groomed as to be impervious to the strong breeze.

The Return from the Boating Trip (1873), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

The dapper gentleman in The Return from the Boating Trip (1873), with his notable ginger whiskers and walrus mustache, is prepared for varying weather. He wears a short, loosely fitted, double-breasted charcoal grey coat – really, a sailor’s pea coat – and carries a black overcoat on his arm. Under the pea coat, the hem of a blue sack coat is apparent. The man’s bright white trousers have a generous, loosely turned-up cuff, and they show off his summery laced-up spectator shoes of white and tan leather. The white scarf neatly folded at his neck echoes his trousers, and under the scarf, his blue- and white-striped Breton shirt is visible. His ivory-colored straw boater has a bright blue and red ribbon band. He, like his companion, is dressed to perfection for this outing.

Quarreling (c. 1874-75), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

The unapologetic young man in Quarreling (c. 1874-75) wears a loosely-cut beige lounge suit that nicely sets off his flamboyant tan and white leather spectator shoes. His white shirt collar is quite high, drawing the eye to his straw boater with its black band. It was in the 1870s that it became acceptable to wear the lounge suit outside one’s domestic environment.

A Passing Storm (c. 1876), by James Tissot. Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The young man in A Passing Storm (c. 1876), also shown after a quarrel with a woman, seems troubled, with his straw boater pushed back off his forehead. He looks elegant in his black lounge suit, under which he wears a white shirt with a stand-up collar paired with a dark brown tie, and a low cut, ivory-colored waistcoat with a shawl collar.

By the Thames at Richmond (c. 1878), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

And, finally, in By the Thames at Richmond (c. 1878), a fashion “Don’t”: hunched over in his misshapen brown hat, wrinkled brown suit, and over-sized white spats covering his dusty black leather shoes, this man hardly cuts a striking figure.

However, the smart gentleman reader will note that the woman he is with gazes at him in adoration nonetheless – as he writes “I love you” with his walking stick in the ground at her feet.

Clothes are not always the measure of a man!

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Officers, soldiers & sailors (1868 – 1883/85)

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.

Not every man that Tissot painted was an exemplar of high style; he depicted a whole cast of supporting players to his aristocrats, military figures, and fashionable males.

Still on Top (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The elderly male servant in Still on Top (c. 1874) wears 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 was a daring picture for an apparent French political refugee of the time, remaking his career in England. One has to wonder if many English servants of the day wore this style cap – or if its appearance in this work is a painterly conceit of Tissot’s. The man’s ensemble seems contrived to blend with the flags before him – his red shirt, blue long-sleeved sweater, and white canvas coveralls. And yet, because Tissot’s habit was faithfully to record the fashions of the time, we can infer the essential accuracy of the type of clothes this man would wear – i.e. the coveralls and the black leather boots with a medium heel.

Sur la Tamise, (Return from Henley, also known as On the Thames, c. 1874), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

These hardy men wear what we now call Henley shirts – a collarless, pullover shirt with a placket, the traditional uniform of rowers in the town of Henley-on-Thames. Their caps have black, blue and white stripes. Both the shirts and the trousers would have been cotton at this time.

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

The cricketers in Holyday (c. 1876), in their black, red, and gold caps, are members of the famous I Zingari cricket club (which still exists, and is one of the oldest amateur cricket clubs), which played at Lord’s Cricket Ground near Tissot’s house at 17 Grove End Road, St John’s Wood, London. Incidentally, the cap colors are based on the motto, “Out of darkness, through fire, into light,” and the gold is always at the top. The men wear buff-colored lounge suits – sack coats paired with trousers cut from the same fabric, considered a casual look. The young man reclining by the ornamental pool has a red carnation boutonnière, and a large ivory-colored scarf loosely knotted at the neck of his white shirt. He wears tan and white laced spectator shoes with a low heel, just like the ones worn by the men Tissot painted in The Return from the Boating Trip (1873) and Quarreling (c. 1874-75) [see Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: The Casual Male (1871 – 1878)].

The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent, c. 1878), by James Tissot. Manchester Art Gallery, U.K. (Photo: Wikiart.org).

In The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent, c. 1878, the servant pushing the wealthy, ailing gent in the bath chair is, in classic supporting player fashion, dressed to recede behind the painting’s stars. The servant’s rumpled brown coat, waistcoat, and trousers are relieved only by a white-spotted black scarf at his throat, and his unusually high-crowned brown hat with its wide maroon band halfway up. Also somewhat incongruous is the high polish on his black leather shoes.

The Letter (c. 1878), by James Tissot. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The elegant manservant in the background of The Letter (c. 1878) wears livery of a black morning coat over a white shirt with a high, stand-up collar and a white tie. His tight black knee breeches blend into his black stockings and black leather shoes, which have no heels – surely allowing discreet attendance.

The Ferry (c. 1879), by James TIssot. Private Collection.

In The Ferry (. 1879), Tissot contrasts the middle-class gentleman with the ferryman. The passenger is hunched under an umbrella in his black bowler hat, black sack coat, pristine white shirt with a stand-up collar, and a tie, kid gloves and trousers in a matching light brown hue, along with black leather shoes and white spats. The supremely capable ferryman steers with glove-less hands and stays warm in his heavy black wool pea coat and dark woolen trousers. He has a natty white-and-black checked scarf at his throat and a Russian fur ushanka hat with the flaps tied up. Incidentally, Tissot’s subversive streak is evident in this painting, as few painters of the time depicted members of the middle-class as less competent than an individual below them on the social scale.

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (also known as Amateur Circus, 1885), by James Tissot. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (Photo: Wikipaintings.org)

The setting for Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (also known as Les femmes de sport, 1885) is the Molier Circus in Paris, a “high-life circus” in which the amateur performers were members of the aristocracy. 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.” Both the Duc and the man on the other trapeze wear flesh-colored leotards covering their chests, arms and legs, with brightly-colored athletic costumes, black leather belts, and colorful, laced leather athletic shoes without heels.

People of beauty and fashion attended the circus and mingled with the performers during the interval; note that the men in the audience wear gleaming silk top hats and morning coats over white shirts with stand-up collars.

Tissot’s work depicts the dress of a broad array of characters in the drama of his era, providing us with a window into his world.

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Officers, soldiers & sailors (1868 – 1883/85)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: The Casual Male (1871 – 1878)

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, often described as a dandy, seems to have dressed flamboyantly as a young art student in Paris and early in his career.

Self portrait, c.1865 (oil on panel), by James Tissot. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA, USA. 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.

Self portrait (c. 1865), by James Tissot. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA, USA. 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.

After Tissot found success (in the early 1860s), he began to present himself as a gentleman of business: he wore a frock coat, and there is no indication that he tried to compete with the stylish aristocrats he painted, even as he earned great wealth in his career. In this image, he wears a heavy, tan overcoat with his black frock coat, a cream-colored, high-cut waistcoat, a white shirt with a stand-up collar and notched cuffs, black cuff links, and a plain black tie.

James Tissot (c. 1867-68), by Edgar Degas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Here is Tissot a few years later, in a portrait by Edgar Degas, and while he is well-dressed, he is not wearing anything flashy or trendy. He wears a black frock coat over a dark grey waistcoat and white shirt, with a black cravat, full-cut light grey trousers and black leather half-boots. His black top hat and satin-lined cape are on the table behind him, as if he might be prepared for an evening at the Opera or the theater.

Whether James Tissot was a gentleman or a rogue is debatable. He seems to have fought, however briefly, for the radical Paris Commune in the spring of 1871, before he relocated to London and soon took a young divorcée as his mistress. Though he seems to have tried to help his struggling painter friends, he accumulated great wealth and ended up being considered a rogue by Degas as well as James Whistler and, at times, Berthe Morisot.

Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, 1st Baron Carlingford (1823-1898), 1871, by James Tissot (Photo credit: Wikipedia.org)

By all accounts, Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, 1st Baron Carlingford (1823-1898) was a thorough gentleman. He was a politically ambitious Irishman and Liberal MP for County Louth from 1847 to 1868. He became a junior lord of the treasury in 1854, and in 1863, he married the beautiful, virtuous and politically influential Society hostess Frances, Countess Waldegrave (1821 – 1879). Fortescue held minor offices in the Liberal administrations until he was made Chief Secretary for Ireland under Lord Russell from 1865 through 1866, and again under Gladstone from 1868 to 1870. From 1871 to 1874, Chichester Fortescue was President of the Board of Trade.

He was described as pedantic but with a fine intellect. In 1853-54, when Fortescue was a bachelor, John Ruskin often left him alone with his young wife Effie, whom he admired and who apparently confided in him. Fortescue would spend a decade in love with Lady Waldegrave before her elderly husband died; she chose him out of the three or four men who wished to marry her. They were very happy together, as he helped her become more educated, and she used her fortune, charm, and hospitality to further his career. Queen Victoria invited the couple to dine with her at Windsor; she enjoyed Lady Waldegrave’s vivacity and appreciated Fortescue’s pleasant and agreeable manner and gentle voice. He was a diffident man who detested all card games and could only relax in the company of Bohemian types like Edward Lear.

In 1871 Tissot painted Fortescue wearing a black frock coat and full-cut fawn-colored trousers with an elegant white shawl-colored waistcoat, a white shirt with a stand-up collar, and a black tie folded over in a single, loose knot accented with a pearl tie tack. His black leather half-boots shine.

Gentleman in a Railway Carriage (1872), by James Tissot. The Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

This elegant man of business, with his neatly trimmed mustache and beard, spares us a glance as he checks his pocket watch. He is dressed in the latest fashion – a lounge suit: his sack coat, waistcoat, and trousers all are cut from the same fabric. This style was introduced in the 1860s for comfort in the domestic sphere; Tissot’s painting shows that by this date, it was appropriate to wear it in public. The light brown wool is a confident choice that would have set this gentleman apart from the sea of colleagues in black frock coats and also makes the top-stitched edging stand out. His crimson tie and commodious fur-trimmed black overcoat are further evidence that he is a flashy and very successful, individual. Imagine what a figure he’ll cut when he alights from the carriage, wearing the black top hat now at his side, and those white kid gloves, perhaps with the boiled wool blanket folded over his arm as he continues to his destination.

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.

On the Thames (1876), by James Tissot. 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.

The Victorians immediately decided this image of a handsome man on an outing with two beautiful women was “More French, shall we say, than English?” Unless the women are the sisters of this junior officer, we might be right to guess that carting them off with a picnic hamper and three bottles of champagne makes him a rogue. He is not in uniform, but wears his black-and-gold naval cap with a loose, thigh-length, single-breasted black wool coat that has wide lapels and upper sleeves, and side vents. He sports off-white trousers with loosely turned-up cuffs, blue socks, and laced, tan-and-white leather spectator shoes with a low heel. Incidentally, Tissot featured the exact same shoes in The Return from the Boating Trip (1873), The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874), Quarreling (c. 1874-75), and Holyday (c. 1876). Perhaps they were studio props, and certainly they are of more visual interest than the plain black half-boots popular with men at that time.

Algernon Moses Marsden (1877), by James Tissot. Private collection. (Photo credit: Wikimedia.org)

Algernon Moses Marsden (1847 – 1920) was no gentleman.

His father, Isaac Moses (1809 – 1884), owned the Ready-Made Clothing Emporium at Aldgate, and by the time Algernon was 10 years old, the family lived in a grand new house at 23 Kensington Palace Gardens with a bow-fronted ballroom at the back. At 24, Algernon married, but rather than join the family business, he established himself as a picture dealer in St. James’s. In an 1872 trade directory, his residence is listed as Bayswater, a suburb west of London. He may have sold Tissot’s In the Conservatory (Rivals, c. 1875) [see For sale: In the Conservatory (Rivals), c. 1875, by James Tissot], and Marguerite in Church (c. 1860) around 1876, the year he sold William Holman Hunt’s 1866 Il Dolce far Niente through Christie’s, London.

Algernon Marsden lived high and went bankrupt by the age of 34; his debts were settled by his father. Algernon and his wife now resided in Kensington with five young daughters, plus Algernon’s 23-year-old niece, and five servants. When his father died in 1884, he disinherited Algernon in his Will but provided legacies for his wife and children.

In bankruptcy court again in 1887, at 40, Algernon said that when money came in, he “got rid of it” by gambling, particularly at the racetrack, but also at Eastbourne, a fashionable resort. By age 44, he, his wife, nine daughters and one son had moved to South Kensington. Bankrupt for at least the third time, Algernon, at age 54, abandoned his wife and ten children and fled to the United States with another woman in 1901. In 1912, The Times of London reported that Algernon Moses Marsden was bankrupt, but he was living in New York, where he died at the age of 72 on January 23, 1920.

Tissot captured this consummate rogue at age 30, wearing an embellished smoking jacket, a crisp, wing-collared white shirt, and a shining gold ring on his left hand.

The Rivals (I rivali, 1878–79), by James Tissot. Private collection.

There’s no telling if these gentlemen are rogues. Tissot’s The Rivals (I rivali, 1878–79) is set in the conservatory of his home in St. John’s Wood, London. It casts his mistress, Kathleen Newton, as a young widow, crocheting while taking tea with two suitors, one middle-aged and one old. The haughty-looking younger man wears a black sack coat over a white shirt with a stand-up collar, a dark tie, and fawn-colored trousers. The older man, still wearing his gloves, leans forward earnestly in his fully-buttoned, double-breasted black sack coat. Perhaps due his girth, his white waistcoat lines the coat rather awkwardly. His dark blue tie is quite wide, and he wears dark grey trousers and an oddly dainty white boutonnière. Incidentally, while most men of this era simply folded their ties over in a single, loose knot, this man has fastened his with a four-in-hand knot.

The Terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London, by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

We can’t suppose these two men are rogues, just because they seem ungentlemanly enough not to interact with the two women in their party. As usual, Tissot depicts an enigmatic situation: these individuals all are waiting for something. The man with the white whiskers and extraordinary matching eyebrows wears a tall grey top hat with a wide black band, which is echoed by his black cravat. He pairs his black frock coat with tan trousers and brown kid gloves. The other man appears to be wearing a black sack coat over his tan trousers. He wears neither hat nor gloves, and shows a bit of an attitude, the way he sits astride the carved chair. Perhaps the two young women are content, not having to converse with the stuffy gentleman nor the unconventional one! Note that Tissot painted this image in 1878, and the lounge suit is not yet so common that either of his male subjects wears it.

Going to Business (c. 1879), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In this painting, the elderly, wealthy businessman is dressed conservatively in a black frock coat with a starched white shirt front, black cravat, and a black top hat. Victorian viewers snickered that he was off to visit his mistress. Gentleman or rogue?

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Officers, soldiers & sailors (1868 – 1883/85)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: The Casual Male (1871 – 1878)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Sportsmen & Servants (1874 – 1885)

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 meticulous technical skills extended beyond oil painting, watercolor, pastels, and engraving to cloisonné.

Cloisonné is an enameling technique in which delicate metal strips or wires are soldered to a metal surface to outline intricate designs, and the spaces (cloisons in French) are filled with pastes made of ground colored glass. The object is fired in a kiln, the paste becomes enamel, and the piece is ground smooth and polished until glossy.

Cloisonné rings exist from 13th century BC Mycenaean Greece, and cloisonné enameling was widespread in the Byzantine Empire from the 10th to the 12th century.

The earliest Chinese cloisonné pieces were made during the Xuande period (1426–1436), but the cloisonné enamel technique was likely introduced into China during the late Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). From that time through the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644), cloisonné enamel pieces were primarily intended for ritual use in Buddhist temples. During the second half of the eighteenth century, imperial workshops were established within the Forbidden City, and there were numerous commissions of cloisonné enamels for the imperial palaces and private residences.

Meanwhile, with the signing of the first commercial treaty between Japan and America in 1854, more than 200 years of Japanese seclusion came to an end. In Paris, a host of import shops cropped up. J.G. Houssaye’s À la porte chinoise (At the Chinese Gate) was established on rue Vivienne by 1855, and by 1856, M. Decelle had opened L’Empire Céleste (The Celestial Empire) there. Houssaye later opened Au Céleste Empire on rue Saint-Marc.

During the Second Opium War in 1860, the dazzling Summer Palace in Beijing – the Emperor’s favorite residence, built between 1750 and 1764 – was looted and burned to the ground by British and French troops. Treasures from the palace arrived in Britain and France along with all manner of exotic porcelains, engravings, lacquer ware, silks, scrolls, screens, fans and trinkets from the Far East.

In 1862, Madame Desoye, who with her husband had lived for many years in Japan, opened an import shop, La Jonque Chinoise (The Chinese Junk) at 220 rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre. Among her customers were Tissot, Manet, Degas, Whistler, and Sarah Bernhardt. So novel was the art of East Asia that the distinction between Japanese and Chinese traditions was blurred into the catch-all term, Oriental.

Cloisonné became popular throughout Europe, especially in France, sparking Chinese production during the reign of the Guangxu emperor (1875–1909). In Japan, cloisonné was popular during the Tokugawa (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods.

Lucien Falize (1839 – 1897) a French goldsmith, visited the International Exhibition in London in 1862 and saw the first display of Oriental works of art at the Japanese Pavilion – the collection of exotic treasures owned by the retired first British Minister to Japan, Sir Rutherford Alcock (1809-1897). In 1867, Falize saw the display of cloisonné enameled objects by the celebrated French jeweler and silversmith firm, Christofle, at the Expositon Universelle in Paris. Falize’s firm began to produce cloisonné jewelry.

Firm of Lucien Falize

Christofle & Cie

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. Notice the cloisonné vases and pots clustered at the bottom right.

By about 1869, James Tissot’s new studio, on the most prestigious new thoroughfare in Paris, the avenue de l’Impératrice (Empress Avenue, now avenue Foch), had become a showcase for his renowned collection of Japanese art, and a landmark to see when touring Paris. Tissot’s villa provided the lavish interiors filled with Oriental carpets, furniture, fabrics, carvings, vases and wall hangings that he used in his paintings.

Jeunes femmes regardant des objects japonais, by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 24 by 19 in. (60.96 by 48.26 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

Jeunes femmes regardant des objects japonais (Young Women Looking at Japanese Objects, 1869), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 24 by 19 in. (60.96 by 48.26 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

But Tissot fled Paris in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the bloody Commune in 1871, and he established himself in the competitive London art market. By 1876, Tissot had earned great wealth and lived in relative seclusion with his mistress and muse, young divorcée Kathleen Newton.

In 1878, Lucien Falize won a Grand Prize and received the Legion of Honor for the work he exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Other illustrious artists, such as the celebrated bronze founder Ferdinand Barbédienne (1810 – 1892) produced cloisonné enamels as well.

In the late 1870s, Tissot began to produce cloisonné enamels. La Fortune (Fortune, c. 1878-1882), on display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, is his largest piece. A design for a fountain or a monument, it comprises patinated bronze, silver bronze, gilt bronze, cloisonné enamel, silver, and glass, on a walnut base.

La Fortune (Fortune, c. 1878-1882), by James Tissot. Height: 127 cm, Diameter: 65 cm

La Fortune (Fortune, c. 1878-1882), by James Tissot. Patinated bronze, silver bronze, gilt bronze, cloisonné enamel, silver, and glass, on a walnut base. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Around 1880 or 1882, Tissot produced an oval jardinière (a planter), Lake and Sea, composed of copper panels decorated in cloisonné enamel with a bronze frame and gilt-bronze mounts. It was based on a rare Ming gilt and enamel jardinière that Tissot acquired for his collection around 1870. The Chinese piece, a basin with pastoral and mountain landscapes on its sides, was among the treasures looted from the Summer Palace in 1860. It inspired Tissot to create the jardinière with Art Nouveau-like nude women seated on dragon heads, in place of the pair of lion-shaped handles on the original.

Lake and Sea, (c. 1880-1882), by James Tissot. Coisonné enamel, bronze frame with gilt-bronze mounts. 240 by 620 by 310 mm. Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton, UK

Tissot exhibited this jardinière with over twenty pieces of cloisonné enamel including a large sculpture, vases, jardinières, trays, teapots, plaques and trial pieces at the Dudley Gallery, in London in 1882. They did not receive much acclaim, and none sold.

Children in a Garden (c. 1882), by James Tissot. Cloisonné enamel on copper (25 by 10 cm). Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Mrs. Newton with a Parasol (1879), by James Tissot. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Note the similarity of the shape of Tissot’s vase, Children in a Garden, compared to the vase he showcased on the table in Jeunes femmes regardant des objects japonais (Young Women Looking at Japanese Objects, 1869), above. The images he used to decorate his modernized vase were based on his paintings of the period, such as Mrs. Newton with a Parasol (1879).

When Kathleen Newton died of tuberculosis on November 9, 1882, Tissot was distraught. Immediately after the funeral on November 14, at the Church of Our Lady in Lisson Grove, St. John’s Wood, he returned to Paris.

He took his paintings and the entire cloisonné collection he had exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, but he left all his paints and art supplies in trays in the studio, and the pots containing the materials for his cloisonné work were left in the basement.

Tissot exhibited his cloisonné collection twice in Paris: in March, 1883 at the Palais de l’Industrie, and again from April to June, 1885 at the Galerie Sedelmeyer. He continued to produce more pieces, but all of them remained in his possession. After his death, some of his cloisonné enamels were sold and some were kept by family members.

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

“Chi-so”: Tissot teaches a brother of Japan’s last Shogun, 1868

James Tissot’s brilliant marketing tool, 1869

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.

The popular and informative 19th century romance, literature, and history blogger, author Mimi Matthews, features a guest post from me this week, James Tissot’s Fashion Plates (1864-1878): A Guest Post by Lucy Paquette.

Mimi’s posts, always so well-researched and entertaining, discuss numerous subjects relevant to the fashions that James Tissot painted in such stunning detail. You can find them at 19th Century Fashion & Beauty, and they include:

Japonism: The Japanese Influence on Victorian Fashion

The 1860s in Fashionable Gowns: A Visual Guide to the Decade

The 1870s in Fashionable Gowns: A Visual Guide to the Decade

The 1880s in Fashionable Gowns: A Visual Guide to the Decade

The Trouble with Bustles: Victorian Fashion in the 19th Century News

The 19^th Century Wire Cage Crinoline

My guest post on Mimi’s blog is just one way to celebrate James Tissot’s 180th birthday on October 15, 2016. I also will have the opportunity to visit two more of Tissot’s oil paintings that I have never seen close up.

I hope you will celebrate James Tissot’s life and work by reading my novel, THE HAMMOCK: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot.*

THE HAMMOCK is the story of ten remarkable years in the life of James Tissot (1836 – 1902), who rebuilt – and then lost – his reputation in London.

By 1870, at age 34, he had become a multi-millionaire celebrity with an opulent new Parisian villa and studio among aristocratic neighbors near the Arc de Triomphe. Handsome and charming, his friends included the painters James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John Everett Millais. When the Prussians attacked Paris that year, Tissot became a sharpshooter in the artists’ brigade defending the besieged capital. After a bloody Communist rebellion, fought virtually at the doorstep of his mansion, he fled to London.

Amid suspicions that he was a Communist, he quickly rebuilt his brilliant career among the Industrial Age’s nouveaux riches. In 1876, Tissot took a young Irish divorcée as his mistress and muse. He referred to her only as “La Mystérieuse” and withdrew from Society to paint her in his garden paradise in the suburbs. Within three years, his pictures had pushed the boundaries of Victorian morality, and the British art establishment turned against him. In a debacle of friendship, fame and loss, his artistic heyday of painting a decade of glamour and leisure in London came to an end. Celebrated during his lifetime, Tissot has been nearly forgotten by all but art historians.

THE HAMMOCK is a psychological portrait, exploring the forces that unwound the career of this complex man. Based on contemporary sources, the novel brings Tissot’s world 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

ISBN: 978-0-615-68267-9 (ePub)

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

View Lucy Paquette’s videos:

“The Strange Career of James Tissot” (2:33 min.)

“Louise Jopling and James Tissot” (2:42 min.)

Take Lucy Paquette’s BuzzFeed Personality Quiz,

Which Female Victorian Artist Are You?

*Don’t own a Kindle? Amazon.com has free Kindle reading apps!

Download free Kindle reading apps for:

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James Tissot painted The Fan about 1875 in London, where he had been living in the four years after the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune.

Following the bloody end to the Commune, Tissot arrived in London in May or June, 1871, with only a hundred francs. By 1873, he was living in a comfortable suburban home at 17 (now 44) Grove End Road in St. John’s Wood, where he built an extension with a studio and conservatory in 1875 that doubled the size of the house.

The Fan (c. 1875), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 15 by 19 in. (38.10 by 48.26 cm). Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In his new conservatory, Tissot painted some of his loveliest images, including The Fan, which celebrates the continuing fascination with japonisme during this era. An auburn-haired beauty wearing a loose, pale yellow dressing gown leans against an elegant length of embroidered silk draped over the back of a large upholstered armchair as she fans herself in a conservatory. Behind her is an exuberant russet-colored plant in a cloisonné jardinière, perched on an Oriental table of carved rosewood, and the breezy fronds of a potted palm. Her gown is trimmed in white pleated ruffles, and she wears the black velvet ribbon around her neck that was de rigueur for fashionable women in 1875. A yellow flower dangles from her thick, coiled braids, echoing the golden motifs in the Japanese cloth. The aqua-colored fan painted with Oriental images is crisp and cool, while that bright red edge on the embroidery accents the entire picture as if underscoring the heat. The painting is sheer beauty; there is no narrative nor, as in most of Tissot’s paintings, any psychological tension. Yet it is an arresting image.

The Fan was sold at Sotheby’s, London in 1982 for $ 73,974/£ 42,000 to Charles Jerdein (1916 – 1999). Jerdein was the trainer who officially received the credit when thoroughbred Gilles de Retz landed the 2,000 Guineas in 1956; the Jockey Club did not recognize the female trainer, Helen Johnson-Houghton. Jerdein left Mrs. Johnson-Houghton’s operation that year, trained on his own for a short time, then concentrated on his business as an art dealer in London, though he occasionally had a horse in training in Newmarket. By the early 1960s, Jerdein had pioneered the market for paintings by James Tissot’s friend, the Dutch-born Victorian painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912), before Alma-Tadema’s name became associated with the American television personality who collected his work, Allen Funt of “Candid Camera.”

Jerdein sold The Fan to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Wadsworth Atheneum was founded in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth (1771–1848), an artistic member of an old and wealthy family.

Now comprising five connected buildings, the Wadsworth began in the distinctive Gothic Revival building of 1844, designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis.

It is the largest art museum in the state and is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes and much more – including Tissot’s wonderful study for his elegant The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their Children, a masterpiece purchased from the family by the Musée d’Orsay in 2006.

I’ve tried to see The Fan for the past few years, but the museum was undergoing renovations. In 2013, The Fan was in the Mississippi Museum of Art’s “Old Masters to Monet” exhibition, one of fifty master works of French art spanning three centuries from the Wadsworth’s collection. After that and through the first two months of 2014, The Fan was on display at the Denver Art Museum’s exhibition, “Court to Café: Three Centuries of French Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum.”

Finally, I was able to see this painting, and it is lush and lovely. See it if you can, but if you can’t manage the trip, here are some close-up photos for you to enjoy.

James Tissot’s brilliant marketing tool, 1869

Tissot in the Conservatory

Tissot in the U.S.: New England

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.

The Circus Lover, one of fifteen oil paintings in James Tissot’s series of contemporary life called “La femme à Paris” (“Women of Paris”), was first exhibited in Paris in 1885 as Les femmes de sport and was displayed in London in 1886 as The Amateur Circus.

Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (also known as The 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)

The setting for The Circus Lover is the Molier Circus in Paris, a “high-life circus” opened in 1880 in which the amateur performers were members of the aristocracy. The London exhibition catalogue denigrated the events as “fancies of a bored generation.” The man on the trapeze wearing red is the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, one of the oldest titles of the French nobility. People of beauty and fashion attended the circus and mingled with the performers during the interval.

The Circus Lover was sold by Gerald M. Fitzgerald at Christie’s, London in mid-1957 to the Marlborough Fine Art Gallery for $ 3,219 USD/£ 1,150 GBP. In early 1958, The Circus Lover was purchased from the Marlborough Fine Art by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts for $ 5,000 as Amateur Circus.

The Circus Lover was included in the blockbuster exhibition, “Impressionism, Fashion, & Modernity,” in Paris, New York and Chicago, and I saw it then. But I recently had a chance to study it at length in Boston, and I have to say, it is an odd picture. It’s garish and crammed with characters and mini-dramas, but it is amusing and definitely compelling. Here are some close-ups I took for those of you who can’t get to the Museum of Fine Arts to see Tissot’s beautifully painted details.

The face makeup and expression on the clown with the Union Jack costume are denoted with thick smudges of paint, while the woman’s bracelet, the dainty edging of her glove, and the fabric of her gown are rendered in finer strokes.

The blonde in the pink gown pulls us into the scene with her direct gaze. Her gown, with its lacy neckline and green accents, is skillfully observed. Behind her, fashionable men in silk top hats are depicted as individuals with distinctive features, and they are alive and busily interacting with each other.

The women sitting in the tier above them are also depicted as individuals, each with very different features, expressions, and ensembles. This photo also shows two of my favorite details – the lively profiles of the woman and the man at the right.

Notice the contrasting textures of the man’s gleaming silk top hat, his soft sideburns, and the wrinkled fabric of his coat. And, above him, a woman whose face is obscured wears an elegant straw hat trimmed in black ribbons and profuse bows. The green patterned fabric of her gown distinguishes her figure from the man, the woman in front of her in the brown patterned dress, and the woman in pink.

The acrobat in blue sits on the trapeze on his thighs rather than his bottom – look how the bar of the swing presses into his flesh. His crossed legs form an inverted triangle, which frames the face of the lady in the red hat. And, on the left, look at the comical expressions on the guards at the entrance to the ring.

The old gent with the white whiskers seems to disapprove of what he sees, but the younger men on the right are clearly amused by something, as are at least two of the ladies seated below them. The two brown gowns are the closest thing to duplicate styles in the whole painting – notice how very different each of the women’s hats are.

The acrobat in red – the Duc de la Rochefoucauld – is sitting directly on his buttocks, which hang rather amusingly over the heads of two bored gentlemen seen behind him.

The Duc de la Rochefoucauld was said to have “the biceps of Hercules,” and his red and white shoes are striking. But in the whole scene, the only person who appears to be looking at him is the lady with the large red fan.

These men in the uppermost tier appear to be checking out the fashionable beauties seated immediately below them, while the man with the opera glasses seems to be focused on the woman in the ivory-colored bonnet seen just behind the Duc de la Rochefoucauld’s right foot.

I love the expressions on the faces of these two friends. They are not impressed. Head to head with impassivity, they are either exchanging acerbic comments on the whole affair, or on the women near them – or they just want to get out of there!

You can feel the heat and the sense of the crowd pressing on you, in all its boredom and restlessness, as audience members anticipate mingling during – or after – the interval.

Though Tissot’s “Women of Paris” series did not meet with critical or popular acclaim, The Circus Lover is yet another of his paintings that opened a window into his world and let posterity in.

Related posts:

Tissot’s La Femme à Paris series

A Closer Look at Tissot’s “The Ladies of the Chariots”

A Closer Look at Tissot’s “The Artists’ Wives”

Tissot in the U.S.: New England

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 executed his oil paintings with meticulous attention to detail, a characteristic of his temperament as well as his academic training in Paris, and he often painted a small preparatory study to work out his composition, palette, and use of light.

In fact, when the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut acquired a small painting in 1941, thought to be the work of an Impressionist painter, it later was recognized as a study for Tissot’s monumental 1865 family portrait, “The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their Children,” which had remained in the family until 2006. That year, it was acquired by the Musée d’Orsay, and the first time it was exhibited publicly since 1866 was with the blockbuster exhibition, Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity, which opened at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, from September 25, 2012 to January 20, 2013, traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from February 26 through May 27 and closed at the Art Institute of Chicago from June 26 to September 22, 2013.

Tissot’s study has been displayed by the Wadsworth Atheneum only since the museum’s recent renovation.

Study for the Family of the Marquis de Miramon (1865), by James Tissot. Oil on paper adhered to panel. 13.25 by 16.5 in. (33.7 by 42 cm). The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. (Photo copyright Lucy Paquette, 2016).

The portrait depicts René de Cassagne de Beaufort, marquis de Miramon (1835 – 1882) and his wife, née Thérèse Feuillant (1836 – 1912), posing with their first two children, Geneviève (1863 – 1924) and Léon (1861 – 1884) on the terrace of the château de Paulhac in Auvergne.

A comparison of the study with the finished painting gives us insight into Tissot’s working methods.

Tissot, then 29 years old, made the study with a general idea of the composition, the setting, the poses and costumes of his subjects, and his palette of greys, blues, and white enlivened with touches of red.

In the study, as in the completed portrait, the tall and elegant Marquise stands on the left of the canvas holding her daughter, Geneviève, and the Marquis is seated to their right in a casual pose.

The most noticeable difference in the finished portrait is that it is considerable lighter, brighter and more lively than the study, which is overall quite dark and stilted. Tissot achieved this effect partly through depicting more open sky through the trees, especially in the center of the painting and behind the heads of the Marquise and Geneviève. Their two faces, turned toward the viewer, are now closer together, providing a highly lit focal point.

And though the Marquise wears a black bolero in the finished portrait, rather than the blue bodice in the study, Geneviève’s figure is much brighter, and the Marquise’s magnificent silk skirt glows and shimmers with light. Tissot decided to extend the final canvas out to the left to accommodate the full sweep of her train.

The Marquis’ dark brown lounge suit in the study is replaced with a lighter grey one — and the red stockings Tissot initially considered for color were replaced by tall black leather riding boots. Color instead is provided by the red flower blossoms at the center of the composition, and the tasteful pink rose in the Marquis’ lapel. Tissot exchanged the Marquis’ broad blue tie for a more subtle spot of a darker blue underscoring his change from a three-quarters view of his subject to a full face portrait. The crisp white cuffs of the Marquis’ shirt provide another brightening touch in the final composition.

As Tissot placed the Marquise, Geneviève, and the Marquis in his study, he clearly struggled with where to place the couple’s son, Léon. The study shows that he planned to paint Léon prominently in the center of the family, and initially, Léon stands in a studied pose reminiscent of an adult male in a formal eighteenth-century aristocratic portrait. However, this strikes a false note in a picture meant to be a modern, informal, English-style portrait of an affectionate family. Tissot also struggled with how to enliven the lower right corner of the composition. In the study, he fills that spot with a highly-patterned blanket and a bright red touch over a wooden ladder-back chair.

In the finished painting, Tissot solved both artistic challenges by placing Léon in the lower right corner — in the chair. The red diced hose that Léon wears in the study have been exchanged for black diced hose, and behind him is a bright red plaid blanket. Further visual interest is provided in that corner of the picture by the ornate table cropped at the extreme right edge.

The family’s large black dog has been relocated from its central position with Léon in the study to a more natural pose at Léon’s feet; Tissot used the dog, in the end, to enliven the central spot at the bottom of the canvas. In a decision that finally unifies the subjects in a pleasing composition, Tissot changed the Marquis’ pose so that his crossed legs lead the eye down his long black boots to the strong black diagonal of the reclining dog.

Léon’s pose is now more natural: he sits on his right leg while dangling his left one off the seat of the chair that he grasps with his hand. While his mother, sister and father gaze directly at the viewer, Léon is very much a little boy whose attention is elsewhere. The Marquis has now taken center place in the family group, and his figure is visually united with his wife’s by the halved pear, part of which is angled toward him while the knife handle is angled toward her.

The red touches that Tissot initially placed in the center and lower right of the composition still were used in the center and lower right in the finished portrait, but in different ways. And notice how the dog’s pink tongue provides the color between the two areas in both the study and the final painting.

Tissot’s study reveals the effort and creative decisions he made to produce one of his most polished and exquisite works.

His care with this composition, and his considerable technical skill in executing it, was reflected in all his work. The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their children was exhibited in Paris, at the Cercle de l’Union Artistique, in 1866, and entered him into the lucrative market for Society portraiture after a decade of living and learning in the French capitol. Although at least one critic did not like the overall grey palette of this picture, and felt that the portrayal of the little boy lacked impact, the Marquis de Miramon next commissioned Tissot to paint an individual portrait of his beautiful wife – and, two years later, a group portrait with eleven of his fellow club members that provided an even greater compositional challenge: The Circle of the Rue Royale.

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)

From Princess to Plutocrat: Tissot’s Patrons

Tissot in the new millenium: Museum Acquisitions

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

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Aristocrats (1865 – 1868)

James Tissot’s Fashion Plates (1864-1878): A Guest Post for Mimi Matthews by Lucy Paquette

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.

An aspect of the fashionable clothing of his day that James Tissot did not fail to capture in paint was mourning. Several of his pictures show mourning attire of the 1860s to the 1880s in great detail.

The five daughters of Queen Victoria in mourning for Prince Albert. March 1862. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

Wearing appropriate mourning attire was one of the many rituals surrounding death in Tissot’s era, particularly in Great Britain when Queen Victoria wore mourning for forty years following the death of her consort, Prince Albert.

Numerous etiquette manuals and popular journals laid out the strict and complicated etiquette of dress that demonstrated respect for the deceased, earned sympathy for the grieving, and often displayed wealth and social status. Different rules applied depending on the bereaved person’s relationship to the deceased person, from grandparents to cousins to servants.

The most stringent, and the most codified, rules governed the attire of widows. As sexually experienced women who were now single, it was crucial that they observe all proprieties. (1)

Advertising for Victorian mourning garb

Large wardrobes were necessary to outfit women for bereavements of up to two and a half years, and this was a lucrative niche for those in the trade, such as Jay’s of Regent Street, opened in 1841 as an establishment for mourning. (2) Peter Robertson founded a mourning warehouse in Regent Street in 1865, maintaining a wide inventory, executing special orders in a day, and even traveling to the countryside for fittings at no extra charge. In 1876, the firm introduced a style catalog from which customers could order ready-to-wear garments to be sent by mail-order. (3)

A widow’s first, or deepest mourning, was worn for a year and a day. Custom dictated every detail of clothing, and types of fabric to be worn, during this and the following period. For example, the bonnet for first mourning must have a veil hanging at the back, and a shorter veil worn over the face, and cambric handkerchiefs must have black borders. Second mourning was worn for twelve months, with complex instructions as to the gradual introduction of additional freedoms, such as wearing hats again. At the end of the second year, mourning could be put off entirely, but it was considered in better taste to wear half mourning for at least six months longer. (4)

A Widow (Une veuve, 1868), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 27 by 19.5 in. (68.5 by 49.5 cm). (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In 1869, James Tissot exhibited A Widow (Une veuve, 1868) at the Salon in Paris. The low-cut, square neckline of this stylish young widow’s full-skirted black gown is filled in with a blouse of filmy black silk, trimmed at the round neckline, center front, shoulders and wrists with frothy ruffles in the same fabric. The set-in sleeves and long and full. The trained skirt’s high waist is tied with a wide sash and accented with a black rosette. The pleated flounce at the hem reveals her white, lace-edged petticoat, a black silk stocking, and a squared-toed high heel with its silk bow. Her brown hair is parted in the center, and braids behind each ear crown her head. Wearing black lace mitts as she dreamily pursues her sewing, it is likely she can be induced to leave off her last months of mourning. The elderly chaperone is in mourning, while the little girl is not.

limperatrice_eugenie_et_son_fils_-_1878_-_james_tissot

The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 50 by 60 in. (106.6 by 152.4 cm). Musee Nationale du Chateau de Compiegne, France. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Empress Eugénie in mourning for her son, 1880. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

Tissot’s double portrait The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874) depicts the exiled French Empress (1826 – 1920), living outside London after the collapse of the Second Empire, and her son, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who would be killed in 1879, at age 23, in the Zulu War. The only child of Napoléon III of France, he was accepted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1872 and is pictured in the uniform of a Woolwich cadet. The Empress is in her first year of mourning following the death of her husband in January, 1873.

Her black gown consists of a high-necked, button-up bodice with long, tight-fitting, set-in sleeves over a white blouse, and a straight, trained skirt with a black draped tablier (apron) overskirt. Her round black cap, so like her son’s, is trimmed in white, and a long black veil trails from its back.

james_tissot_-_the_widower_-_google_art_project

The Widower (Le veuf, 1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot exhibited The Widower (1876) at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. He depicts this widower with a lumpy, crushed hat of soft felt, wearing a sack coat. The bereaved man appears so much sadder than if he were dressed in a dapper frock coat and top hat.

Orphans (L’Orpheline, 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 85 by 43 in. (216 by 109.2 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Orphans (L’Orpheline, 1879), features Tissot’s mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854 – 1882) and was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Mrs. Newton’s form-fitting mourning gown was the very latest style – the new cuirasse bodice and Princess line seaming created by couturier Charles Worth. Fitted over a white blouse with lace showing at the wrists under the long, slim, set-in sleeves, it is a different style of gown altogether from previous Victorian dresses. It has no waist seam: the seams run continuously from the shoulder to the hem, and the shape is created by sewing long, fitted fabric pieces together. Note the center front of her gown, a vertical section of pleated bands. The Princess seam created a tall, slender look. It depended on the curaisse bodice, a tightly-laced, boned corset that encased the torso, waist, hips and thighs. The result was a dramatic narrowing of the silhouette of women’s fashion in the late 1870s.

Mrs. Newton wears black lace mitts, a peaked bonnet embellished with black feathers, and a heavy black scarf around her neck. She wears a corsage of lavender and white chrysanthemums, but no jewelry except for the wedding band visible on the third finger of her left hand. It is likely that she is being represented as a widow in her secondary mourning, as lavender was considered a color appropriate for that stage.

The little girl [modeled by Kathleen Newton’s niece, Lilian Hervey (1875 – 1952)] also wears mourning – though, oddly, she seems dressed for different weather entirely in her short-sleeved, button-down black dress over a white chemise. She has bare arms and legs and wears white socks with black strapped shoes.

The Rivals (I rivali, 1878-79), by James Tissot. Private Collection.

Tissot’s The Rivals (I rivali, 1878–79) is set in the conservatory of his home at 17 (now 44), Grove End Road in St. John’s Wood, London. It casts his mistress, young divorcée Kathleen Newton, as a young widow, crocheting while taking tea with two suitors, one middle-aged and one old. Mrs. Newton is wearing the same black gown she did in L’Orpheline (Orphans, 1879). In this picture, Tissot paints her so close to the end of her mourning that she is entertaining men – and so nonchalant about it that she slouches in her fur-lined, wicker armchair while focusing on her needlework!

Tissot exhibited this painting at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Kathleen Newton died of tuberculosis on November 9, 1882, at age 28, at Tissot’s house with her sister, Polly Hervey, at her side (according to the death register). Tissot draped the coffin in purple velvet and prayed beside it for hours. Immediately after the funeral on November 14, at the Church of Our Lady in Lisson Grove, St. John’s Wood, Tissot abandoned his home and returned to Paris.

Sans dot (Without Dowry, 1883-85), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 58 by 41 in. (147.32 by 104.14 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot exerted himself to re-establish his reputation in Paris, which he had fled following the bloody aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, 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, modern colors than he had in his previous work.

412px-womans_bonnet_mourning_lacma_41-11-8

Women’s mourning bonnet in hard crape, c. 1880. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

The elegant young widow in Sans dot (Without Dowry, 1883-85) takes the air in the gardens in Versailles wearing a buttoned-up, high-necked black bodice with three-quarter, eighteenth-century-style Sabot sleeves that fit tightly before flaring into a deep ruffle below the elbow. Black gloves cover her hands and forearms. She wears a black draped tablier (apron) overskirt over a straight, pleated underskirt in sable-colored silk. Her high-crowned, black straw bonnet features a large black bow over her fringe, echoed by a soft bow tied neatly under her chin. Because her bonnet is so elaborately beribboned and has no veil, we know she is past her first year of mourning (when the appropriate bonnet was simple, like the one shown at the right) and is now in secondary mourning. The widow maintains a wistful expression and a demure posture before her work basket and a book while her elderly chaperone, who is wearing mourning and a bonnet with a veil, is absorbed in the newspaper. She appears completely aware of her charms – and of the fact that her lack of a dowry seems unlikely to affect her ability to attract another husband.

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

Tissot’s La Femme à Paris series

REFERENCE WORKS:

(1) Sidell, Misty White, “A time when the wrong outfit could lead to disgrace and scandal: New Costume Institute exhibit to explore the strict world of Victorian mourning fashions,” Daily Mail, (July 1, 2014); http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2677118/A-time-wrong-outfit-lead-disgrace-scandal-New-Costume-Institute-exhibit-explore-strict-world-Victorian-mourning-fashions.html (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

(2) “Victorian Mourning Etiquette,” http://www.tchevalier.com/fallingangels/bckgrnd/mourning/ (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

(3) Hansen, Viveka, “Jet & Dressed in Black – the Victorian Period (B 20),” TEXTILIS (October 12, 2016); https://textilis.net/ (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

(4) Robinson, Nugent. Collier’s Cyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information. New York: F. Collier, 1882. (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

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.

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.

The whereabouts of James Tissot’s The Widow (Une Veuve, 1868), exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1869, was for many years unknown by art historians. It was known to the art world only because Tissot had included it in a photograph album of his work; he was one of the first painters to document his entire oeuvre using photography.

A Widow (Une veuve, 1868), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 27 by 19.5 in. (68.5 by 49.5 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Widow was purchased during World War II at Acquavella, the New York gallery, and was hung in a mansion abroad. In September, 1982, it was discovered, hanging behind a door, by Thilo von Watzdorf (b. 1944), Sotheby’s 19^th century art specialist, who was visiting the owner to see other paintings in her collection.

Scholars enhanced interest in Tissot’s life and work during the 1980s, and dozens of Tissot oils changed hands from 1980-89.

Sotheby’s estimated The Widow would bring $150,000 to $200,000 at auction, breaking the record high for a Tissot of $148,230 set for his Return of the Prodigal Son at Christie’s, London, in 1982.

The Widow was offered in a sale of 19^th century European paintings, drawings and watercolors at Sotheby’s, New York in February, 1983, bringing $ 185,000 USD/£ 121,105 GBP.

In June 1992, The Widow brought $ 277,800 USD/£ 150,000 GBP at a sale of Victorian Pictures & Watercolours at Christie’s, London.

In early 1993, Victorian art expert Christopher Wood (1941 – 2009) commented on the popularity of James Tissot’s oil paintings among Manhattan Society hostesses: “I can think of ten to twenty Tissots within a few blocks of each other in New York.”

In New York in February of that year, Sotheby’s offered three major Tissot paintings, and Christie’s two.

Sans dot (Without Dowry, 1883-85), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 58 by 41 in. (147.32 by 104.14 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The three paintings at Sotheby’s, from Tissot’s series of fifteen large-scale pictures called La Femme à Paris (The Parisian Woman) painted between 1883 and 1885, included Sans Dot (Without Dowry), which sold for $ 800,000/£ 553,824.

Orphans (L’Orpheline, 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 85 by 43 in. (216 by 109.2 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The next day, at Christie’s sale of 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors, Tissot’s L’Orpheline (Orphans, 1879), featuring Tissot’s mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854 – 1882). L’Orpheline was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Expected to bring $ 600,000- 800,000/£ 400,000- 530,000), the painting set a new record for a Tissot oil when sold for $ 2,700,000/£ 1,867,865 to art dealer David Mason, with MacConnal-Mason, a fourth generation gallery in St. James established in 1893. Mason was acting on behalf of musical composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948), who in the next decade would collect some of Tissot’s best work – at very high prices.

The Widower (Le veuf, c. 1877), by James Tissot. Oil on panel. 14 by 9 in. (35.56 by 22.86 cm) Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Still, there were some bargains to be found: Lloyd Webber purchased The Widower (c. 1887), a smaller replica of the original which Tissot exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, at Sotheby’s, London in 1994 for $ 122,587/£ 75,000.

The 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. Since 1913, The Rivals has been in private collections in Milan, beginning with the Ingegnoli Collection. 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 October 2014 sale, The Rivals was purchased for € 954,600 EUR (Premium) [$ 1,215,969/£ 753,715]. The Rivals, in pristine condition, was displayed at the Stair Sainty Gallery booth at TEFAF, the world’s leading art fair, in Maastricht, Netherlands, March 13-22, 2015.

Celebrities & Millionaires Vie for Tissot’s Paintings in the 1990s

James Tissot in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

Tissot’s La Femme à Paris series

James Tissot in Mourning

CH377762 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.

Self portrait (c.1865), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 49.8 x 30.2 cm (19 5/8 x 11 7/8 in.). The Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California. Museum purchase, Mildred Anna Williams Collection, 1961.16. Image 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 Victorian Web, a vast resource on literature, history and culture in the age of Victoria, invited me to contribute a Chronology of the life of French painter James Tissot (1836-1902), whose successful career in London spanned a decade from 1871 to 1882.

1836 October 15: Jacques Joseph Tissot is born in Nantes, the second of four sons by Marcel-Théodore Tissot, a wholesale linen draper, and Marie Durand, who with her sister owns a millinery company.

c. 1848-55 Educated in Jesuit schools in Flanders, Brittany and the Jura.

1855 Enlists in the National Guard of the Seine, the Fourth Company of the Eighteenth Battalion when he arrives in Paris to study art. Rents a succession of student rooms in the Latin Quarter.

1857 January 26: Registers to copy paintings at the Louvre. Thought to have met James McNeill Whistler this year.

March 9: enrolls at the Académie des Beaux-Arts; studies painting independently under Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin and Louis Lamothe, both former students of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

1859 As James Tissot, makes debut at Salon in Paris with five works.

Meets Edgar Degas, probably due to whom he meets Édouard Manet.

Travels to Antwerp to take lessons with Hendrik Leys; meets Lourens Tadema [later Lawrence Alma-Tadema].

1860 The Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Director-General of Museums, purchases The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite on behalf of the government for the Luxembourg Museum for 5,000 francs.

c. 1860-61 Experiments with etching, a revived print-making technique.

1861 Exhibits six paintings at Salon.

May 4: mother dies, leaving him an inheritance.

1862 Visits London. One painting at International Exhibition. Meets John Everett Millais around this time.

Visits Milan, Venice and Florence.

1863 Three paintings at Salon.

Becomes lifelong friends with writer Alphonse Daudet.

Settles more than 100,000 francs in debt.

1864 Two paintings at Salon. One painting at Royal Academy (R.A): At the Break of Day.

November: Dante Gabriel Rossetti finds all the Japanese costumes at Paris import shops are “being snapped up by a French artist, Tissot, who it seems is doing three Japanese pictures.”

1865 Two paintings at Salon.

Two steel engravings after his illustrations included on the frontispiece and title page of Tom Taylor’s English translation of La Villemarque’s Barzaz-Breiz, Chants populaires de la Bretagne, which also featured several wood engravings in the text after Millais and others. D.G. Rossetti is so impressed by Tissot’s contributions that he requests a proof of each from the publisher.

By this year, is earning 70,000 francs a year as an easel painter.

1866 Two paintings at Salon; elected hors concours, entitled to submit work without jury review.

Purchases property at 64, avenue de l’Impératrice (now avenue Foch).

1867 Two paintings at Salon. Two paintings at Exposition Universelle, Paris.

1867-68 Moves into newly-constructed, luxurious villa in the avenue de l’Impératrice, his Paris residence for the rest of his life. His studio becomes a showcase for his renowned collection of Oriental art and a landmark to see when touring Paris.

His portrait in oil painted by Degas, who keeps it until his death in 1917.

1868 Four works at Salon.

Appointed drawing master of fourteen-year-old Japanese Prince Tokugawa Akitake, visiting Paris.

1869 Two paintings at Salon.

First political cartoons for Thomas Gibson Bowles’ Vanity Fair magazine, to which he contributes until 1877.

1870 Two paintings at Salon.

Second Empire collapses on September 2; joins Éclaireurs (Scouts) of the Seine, an elite sharpshooter unit defending Paris during the Prussian Siege.

October 3: Seeks refuge at rented lodgings of Thomas Gibson Bowles, in Paris as Morning Post war correspondent. Begins series of drawings to illustrate for Bowles’ book, The Defence of Paris, Narrated As It Was Seen (published 1871).

October 21: fights in the Battle of Malmaison and is wounded.

1871 One painting, Vive la République! (Un souper sous le Directoire, c. 1870), at Third International Exhibition, Vienna.

Remains in Paris during the Commune, recording numerous incidents in his sketchbook and in small watercolors. Relocates to London in June with only 100 francs; lodges with Thomas Gibson Bowles at Cleeve Lodge in Hyde Park Gate for several months.

June 19: inscribes drawing, French Soldier (1870) to Effie Millais.

British Society novelist Ouida invites Tissot to her home on June 21, where “some English artists will enjoy the great pleasure of meeting you & seeing your sketches.”

Tissot commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, 1st Baron Carlingford, funded by a group of eighty-one Irishmen including forty-nine MPs, five Roman Catholic bishops and twenty-seven peers to commemorate his term as Chief Secretary for Ireland under Gladstone – as a present to his wife, Society hostess Frances, Countess Waldegrave.

September 30: Degas writes from Paris, “They tell me you are earning a lot of money.”

1872 Two paintings at R.A.: An Interesting Story and Les Adieux. Four paintings at International Exhibition, London.

March: resides at 73, Springfield Road, St. John’s Wood.

1873 Purchases lease on villa at 17 (now 44), Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood.

Three paintings at R.A.: The Captain’s Daughter, The Last Evening, and Too Early.

1874 Three paintings at R.A.: London Visitors, Waiting, and The Ball on Shipboard.

Declines exhortation from Degas to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris. Makes trip to Paris.

Autumn: Travels to Venice with Manet.

November 3: Parisian novelist and art critic Edmond de Goncourt writes in his journal that Tissot has in his London house “a waiting room, where, at all times, there is iced champagne at the disposal of visitors, and around the studio, a garden where, all day long, one can see a footman in silk stockings brushing and shining the shrubbery leaves.”

1875 Two paintings at R.A.: The Bunch of Lilacs and Hush! (The Concert).

Builds an extension with a studio and a conservatory designed by architect J.M. Brydon that doubles the size of his St. John’s Wood villa.

Offers career advice to Berthe Morisot during her honeymoon in England with Eugène Manet. After one visit to his home, she writes to her mother that his paintings sell for as much as 300,000 francs each; she writes to a sister that he is “living like a king.”

Resumes etching, under the tutelage of Seymour Haden.

c. 1876 Kathleen Newton moves into Tissot’s St. John’s Wood home, and the couple lives in relative seclusion for six years.

1876 Three paintings at R.A.: The Thames, A Convalescent, and Quarrelling, and one etching, The Thames. Two etchings at Salon. Publishes first collection of etchings, of which he produces nearly ninety in the next decade.

Tissot’s etchings account for a significant and increasing proportion of his earnings between 1876 and 1881.

Late 1870s: Tissot begins to produce cloisonné enamels.

1877 Ten works at Grosvenor Gallery.

1878 Nine works at Grosvenor Gallery.

November 23-24: Refuses to testify for Whistler in his libel suit against John Ruskin.

1878-82 Exhibits work throughout Britain, in Brighton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Wrexham, Leeds, Glasgow, Birmingham, and in London galleries.

1879 Twelve works at Grosvenor Gallery.

1880 Becomes a charter member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, founded by Seymour Haden for artists who produced their own prints of their paintings. Begins exhibiting his prints regularly in England and Scotland.

September 24: Vincent van Gogh writes to his brother of Tissot, “there is something of the human soul in his work and that is why he is great, immense, infinite…”

1881 Two paintings at R.A.: Quiet and Goodbye – On the Mersey.

1882 Spring: One-man exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, London, “Exhibition of Modern Art by J. J. Tissot” includes Prodigal Son series, eight paintings, and fifty-eight etchings as well as twenty-one cloisonné enamels.

May: Visits Paris to discuss illustrations for a novel by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Renée Mauperin(published 1884).

November 9: Kathleen Newton dies from tuberculosis at Tissot’s St. John’s Wood home.

November 14: Kathleen Newton’s funeral, immediately after which Tissot moves back to Paris.

1883 March: One-man exhibition at Palais de l’Industrie; works include his cloisonné collection.

Begins series of large-scale oil paintings, La Femme à Paris (Women of Paris).

Joins Société d’aquarellistes français and exhibits his work.

Sells his St. John’s Wood home to Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

1884 Exhibits with Société d’aquarellistes français.

1885 La Femme à Paris series exhibited at Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris, along with his cloisonné collection. Continues to produce cloisonné enamels, but all of them remain in his possession.

Joins new Société de pastellistes français and exhibits work. From the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, executes about forty portraits of aristocratic and Society women, most often in pastel.

Engagement to Louise Riesener, daughter of painter Léon Riesener, broken by her.

May 20: Makes contact with Kathleen Newton’s spirit during a séance and records it in L’apparition médiunimique.

1885-86 First trip to Palestine to research his illustrated Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

1886 Women of Paris exhibited at Arthur Tooth and Sons, London as Pictures of Parisian Life by J.J. Tissot.

Exhibits with Société d’aquarellistes français.

1887 Exhibits at least one painting, Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern (1874), at Nottingham Castle and at Newcastle-on-Tyne.

1888 Three works at International Exhibition, Glasgow.

Father dies, leaving him the Château de Buillon, near Besançon. During his remaining years, lives partly in Paris and partly at the Château, improving the building and grounds.

1889 Exhibits Prodigal Son series, for which he wins a gold medal, and one painting at the Exhibition Universelle, Paris.

Second trip to Palestine to research his illustrated Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

1893 Exhibits Prodigal Son series and a pastel portrait in World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago.

1894 Exhibits 270 illustrations for La Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ at Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

1895 Exhibits complete series of 365 Life of Christ illustrations in Paris.

About this year, begins colossal Christ Pantocrator for high altar of the convent church of the Dominicans in the rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris.

1896 Exhibits complete Life of Christ series in London. La Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ published in France, with the artist receiving a million francs for reproduction rights.

Third trip to Palestine to begin an illustrated Old Testament (published 1904). On the ship, English artist George Percy Jacomb-Hood encounters Tissot and finds him “a very neatly dressed, elegant figure, with a grey military moustache and beard…gloved and groomed as if for the boulevard.”

1897 Exhibits Life of Christ illustrations at Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ published in London and New York.

December: Christ Pantocrator dedication ceremony.

1898 February: Visits New York to arrange tour of Life of Christ illustrations.

October: Visits Chicago to arrange tour of Life of Christ illustrations before traveling to New York for exhibition opening.

November 18: After calling on Archbishop Corrigan in New York, is dragged nearly a block when trying to board a Madison Avenue line trolley car, leaving him bruised and unnerved.

New Testament watercolors tour New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, and other cities through 1899, to adoring crowds.

1900 New Testament watercolors acquired by the Brooklyn Museum by public subscription of $60,000.

1901 Exhibits 95 Old Testament illustrations at Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

1902 August 8: dies at Château de Buillon after being stricken by a “pernicious fever.”

References

Guerin, Marcel, ed. Degas: Letters. Trans. By Marguerite Kay. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1947.

Marshall, Nancy Rose and Malcolm Warner. James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999.

Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, ed. James Tissot. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985, c. 1984 Barbican Art Gallery.

Misfeldt, Willard. “James Jacques Joseph Tissot: A Bio-Critical Study,” Ph.D. diss., Washington University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1971.

Misfeldt, Willard E. J.J. Tissot: Prints from the Gotlieb Collection. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1991.

Warner, Malcolm. Tissot. London: The Medici Society Ltd. 1982.

Wentworth, Michael. James Tissot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

Wood, Christopher. Tissot: The Life and Work of Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1836-1902. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd., 1986.

My thanks to The Victorian Web‘s Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster, George Landow, and to Associate Editor Jackie Banerjee

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 career spanned three successful periods: his early years in Paris (1859-1870), his business-like decade in London (1871-1882), and his later years in France and the Holy Land (1883-85), depicting fashionable women of Belle Époque Paris and making research trips for his series of Bible illustrations.

Born Jacques Joseph Tissot, his parents were self-made, prosperous merchants in the textile and fashion industry in the bustling seaport of Nantes. Jacques moved to Paris in 1856 to study painting and made his début at the Salon three years later, as James Tissot. Tissot and his painting, La Rencontre 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 in 1860 on behalf of the government for the Luxembourg Museum for 5,000 francs. The provincial young painter achieved Establishment acceptance far sooner than his struggling friends, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Édouard Manet (1832-1883).

Tissot’s paintings in the Salon in 1864 reflected the trend toward capturing “modernity,” and he began to hit his stride as an artist with The Two Sisters and Portrait of Mademoiselle L.L.

James Jacques Joseph Tissot (c. 1867-68), by Edgar Degas. Oil on canvas, 59 5/8 x 44 in. (151.4 x 111.8 cm). (Open Access image courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Rogers Fund, 1939)

At the Paris Salon in 1866, Tissot was elected hors concours: from then on, he could exhibit any painting he wished at the annual Salon without first submitting his work to the jury’s scrutiny. The price for his pictures skyrocketed. At 30, he decided to purchase property on the most prestigious new thoroughfare in Paris, the avenue de l’Impèratrice (Empress Avenue, now avenue Foch). By late 1867 or early 1868, Tissot was living in grand style in his luxurious new villa.

In 1868, Tissot was commissioned to paint the most lucrative and elaborate painting of his career, a group portrait of “The Circle of the Rue Royale, an exclusive private club whose twelve members each paid 1,000 francs toward the painting.

In 1869, at the top of his game depicting the leisured and refined life of the Second Empire, Tissot began contributing wicked political caricatures to London’s newest Society journal, the subversive Vanity Fair, founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles (1842-1922). Tissot’s first subject was Napoléon III, whom he skewered.

When the Second Empire collapsed on September 2, 1870, Tissot’s charmed life in Paris ended. He became a sharpshooter, defending Paris in an elite unit, the Éclaireurs (Scouts) of the Seine. In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War — the bloody Commune in mid-1871 — James Tissot fled Paris with 100 francs to his name, establishing himself in the competitive London art market by catering to the British taste. By 1873, he bought the lease on a spacious villa in St. John’s Wood, soon building an extension with a studio and huge conservatory.

Tissot had ceased to exhibit his work in the Salon in 1870 and declined Degas’s exhortation to show his work in Paris with the independent group of French artists who organized their first of eight exhibitions in Paris in 1874 and who soon became known as Impressionists. From 1872 to 1875, Tissot exhibited his work only at the Royal Academy, with works such as The Ball on Shipboard (1874). He generated a great deal of income selling prints of his paintings as well as watercolor replicas. By 1876, he had earned great wealth and lived in relative seclusion for six years with his mistress and muse, young divorcée Kathleen Irene Ashburnham Kelly Newton (1854-1882).

From 1877 to 1879, Tissot exhibited his work only at the new Grosvenor Gallery, an invitation-only alternative to the Royal Academy, where artists could showcase as many works as they wished in the palatial edifice in New Bond Street. Kathleen Newton posed for several works Tissot exhibited there, including Evening (1878) and The Hammock (1879).

When Mrs. Newton died of tuberculosis in late 1882, at age 28, Tissot abandoned his St. John’s Wood home and returned to Paris, selling his London house the next year to Dutch-born painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 ñ 1912).

Tissot exerted himself to re-establish his reputation in Paris with a series of fifteen large-scale pictures called La Femme de Paris (The Parisian Woman). Painted between 1883 and 1885, they portrayed the fashionable parisienne in various incarnations using brighter, modern colors than he had in his previous work, but they were poorly received. Tissot then supposedly dedicated the remainder of his life solely to illustrating the Bible, even making repeated research trips to the Holy Land in 1886-87, 1888 and 1889. His series of 365 gouache illustrations for the Life of Christ were shown to enthusiastic crowds in Paris (1894 and 1895), London (1896) and New York (1898) after which they toured North America until 1900. They were published in 1896-97 and in several later editions. However, during this time, Tissot also executed about forty portraits of aristocratic women and other beautiful Society figures in sumptuous Belle Époque settings from the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, most often using pastels.

James Tissot died in 1902, at age 66, extremely wealthy and renowned for what was considered his great masterpiece, The Life of Christ illustrations. In his obituary in The Evening Post, Tissot was compared to William Blake, though “uniting as Blake never did, and as no other prominent artist has done, the mystical and ideal with an intense realism.”

The Victorian Web is a vast resource on literature, history and culture in the age of Victoria.

My thanks to The Victorian Web‘s Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster, George Landow, and to Associate Editor Jackie Banerjee

Bibliography

Johnson, E. D. H. “Victorian Artists and the Urban Milieu. The Victorian City: Images and Realities. H. J. Dyos and Michael Wolff. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Pp. 449-74.

“Joseph Tissot, Artist.” Evening Post, 64.37 (12 August 1902).

Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, ed. James Tissot. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985; Barbican Art Gallery, c. 1984.

Misfeldt, Willard. “James Jacques Joseph Tissot: A Bio-Critical Study.” Ph.D. diss., Washington University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1971.

Misfeldt, Willard E. J.J. Tissot: Prints from the Gotlieb Collection. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1991.

Misfeldt, Willard E. The Albums of James Tissot. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982.

Wentworth, Michael. James Tissot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

Wentworth, Michael. James Tissot: Catalogue Raisonnée of his Prints. London: 1978.

Wood, Christopher. Tissot: The Life and Work of Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1836-1902. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd., 1986.

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 kept a small wardrobe of prop costumes, which he periodically supplanted, that provided visual interest to his oil paintings. Tissot, whose father was a wholesale linen draper (a trader in fabrics and dress trimmings to retailers and exporters) and mother a hat company owner, was a virtuoso at painting every detail of women’s fashions. He brought each flounce, pleat and nuance in the fabrics and trims to life, and he showcased his extraordinary technical skills when portraying patterns such as stripes, checks and plaids. The gowns which adorned his models were elegant and stylish enough to make a fashion statement – though perhaps with new accessories – over a period of one to as many as five years.

Young Women looking at Japanese articles (1869), by James Jacques Joseph Tissot. Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 50.2 cm. Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, USA; Gift of Henry M. Goodyear, M.D. 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 Stairs (c. 1869), by James Tissot. Private Collection.

At the height of Tissot’s success in Paris, when in his early thirties, he re-used a white, bobble-trimmed morning gown with a cape collar in The Stairs (L’escalier, c. 1869, Private Collection), Mélancolie (1869, Private Collection) and two of the three versions of Young ladies admiring Japanese objects (Jeunes femmes regardant des objets japonais, 1869; one, Private Collection, the other, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio).

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Young Ladies Admiring Japanese Objects (1869), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikipaintings.org)

Also in 1869, Tissot re-used a brown visiting ensemble – a skirt with a pleated hem and a fur-trimmed paletôt – in The Snack (Le Goûter, Private Collection), Rêverie (1869, Private Collection), and Le rendez-vous secret (c. 1869, Private Collection), which he also used c. 1865-69 for Dans l’église (In Church, Private Collection). In each painting, the ensemble is shown from a different angle.

In Church (Dans l’eglise, c. 1865-69), by James Tissot. (Image: Wikiart.org)

Le rendez-vous secret (c. 1869), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

On the River (1871), by James Tissot. U.K. Government Art Collection.

In 1871, Tissot painted more than one version of On the River (A la rivière), featuring a long-sleeved white muslin gown he had used in several versions of Young Woman in a Boat (Jeune femme en bateau, 1870).

He had used the same dress, with its distinctive cuffs, in Unaccepted (1869, Private Collection).

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

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

After Tissot moved to London in mid-1871, following the Franco-Prussian War and its bloody aftermath, the Paris Commune, he continued his practice of re-using eye-catching costumes for the female models in his paintings.

Autumn on the Thames, Nuneham Courtney (c. 1871-72), by James Tissot. (Image: Wikiart.org)

The central figure in Autumn on the Thames, Nuneham Courtney (c. 1871-72) wears an ensemble that shows how women’s outerwear was redesigned to accommodate the new soft bustle style.

Years later, in Quarreling (c. 1874-76), Tissot showed another view of the back of this still-chic ensemble.

Quarreling (c. 1874-76), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikiart.org)

The Return from the Boating Trip (1873), by James Tissot. (Image: Wikipaintings.org)

A more notable investment was the stunning, black-and-white striped gown that features in some of Tissot’s most well-known images from the 1870s. In The Return from the Boating Trip (1873), Tissot features a woman facing the viewer, wearing the striped gown under a black paletôt. He used the gown again in Boarding the Yacht (1873, Private Collection) and The Captain and the Mate (1873, Private Collection), and from the back in Still on Top (c. 1874, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand) and Preparing for the Gala (c. 1874, Private Collection). He used the dress yet again in Portsmouth Dockyard (also known as Entre les deux mon coeur balance, or How Happy I Could Be with Either, c. 1877, Tate Britain, U.K.), which he exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery from May to June 1877.

Still on Top (c. 1874), by James Tissot.

Portsmouth Dockyard circa 1877 by James Tissot 1836-1902

Portsmouth Dockyard (How Happy I Could Be with Either), c. 1877), by James Tissot. Tate Britain, U.K. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

The same cream overdress edged in fringe appears in The Captain and the Mate, Boarding the Yacht and A Visit to the Yacht (La Visite au Navire, c. 1873).

Boarding the Yacht (1873), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikipaintings.org)

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A Visit to the Yacht (c. 1873), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

Less recognizable is the low-cut, flounced pink ball gown with red trim which appears at the center of Too Early (1873) and at the center left in Hush! The Concert (c. 1875).

Detail, Too Early (1873), by James Tissot. Guildhall Art Gallery, U.K. (Image: Lucy Paquette).

Hush! (The Concert), c. 1875, by James Tissot. Manchester Art Gallery, U.K. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot re-used a striped overdress with a column of black buttons down the center of the apron on the female figures in two versions of London Visitors (c. 1874), Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern (c. 1874, Speed Museum of Art, Kentucky, U.S.) as well as on the seated woman on the left in The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874, Tate Britain, U.K.).

London Visitors (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, U.S. (Image: Wikipedia Commons)

Detail, Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Speed Museum of Art, Kentucky, U.S. (Image: Lucy Paquette)

Detail, The Ball on Shipboard (C. 1874). Tate Britain, U.K. (Image: Lucy Paquette)

The woman in Reading the News (c. 1874) wears a tailored yachting gown cut from a heavy white fabric, probably cotton, and trimmed in navy blue ribbon and soft white cotton fringe.

Tissot painted this untrained gown from two other angles in The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874).

Reading the News (c. 1874), by James Tissot.

Detail, The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874), Tate Britain, U.K. (Image: Lucy Paquette)

Notice how Tissot re-used the pink gown with the maroon trim – as well as a matching hat – on a minor figure climbing the stairs to the right in The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874) and on a seated woman shown from the back in In the Conservatory (The Rivals, c. 1875, Private Collection). In the latter painting, he also captures the blue gown (and hat) from two different angles.

Detail, The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874), by James Tissot. (Image: Lucy Paquette)

In the Conservatory (Rivals, c. 1875), by James Tissot. Private Collection.

A 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.

James_Tissot_-_Portrait_of_Miss_Lloyd James_Tissot_-_July

A summery white gown trimmed with lemon-yellow satin ribbons was prominent in a half-dozen of Tissot’s oils in the mid-1870s, including A Portrait (1876, Tate Britain) [left], A Convalescent (c. 1876, Museums Sheffield), and A Passing Storm (c. 1876, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick).

Tissot painted the same gown, with blue ribbons instead, in A Fête Day at Brighton (c. 1875-1878, Private Collection).

In Spring (c. 1878, Private Collection) [right] and July (Speciman of a Portrait, c. 1878, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio), the gown is modeled by Tissot’s new mistress and muse, the young divorced mother Kathleen Newton (1854 – 1882). [Note that her hair was overpainted red at some later date.]

July (Speciman of a Portrait, c. 1878), by James Tissot. Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, U.S.

A Fete Day at Brighton (c. 1875-78), by James Tissot. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

Once Mrs. Newton began modeling for Tissot, the gowns he repeatedly depicted clearly were hers, tailored to her slender figure. One of the loveliest garments that Tissot painted her in more than once is the exuberantly embroidered black coat she wore in October (1877, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada) and Mavourneen (Portrait of Kathleen Newton, 1877, Private Collection).

Mavourneen (Portrait of Kathleen Newton, 1877). Oil on canvas, 36 in. /91.44 cm. by 20 in./50.80 cm. Photo 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

October (1877), by James Tissot. Musee des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, Canada. (Image: Wikipedia.org)

Also striking is the simple brown floral dress worn by Mrs. Newton in By the Thames at Richmond, (c. 1878/79, Private Collection), three oil versions (and one watercolor version) of La sœur aînée (The Elder Sister, c. 1881) [below, an oil version], The Garden Bench (Le banc de jardin, c. 1882, Private Collection), and by the seated woman to the right in In Full Sunlight (En plein soleil, c. 1881, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) as well as the woman in the background in A Children’s Party (c. 1881/82).

La soeur ainee (The Elder Sister, c. 1881), by James Tissot.

Le banc de jardin (The Garden Bench, c. 1882), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikiart.org)

In Full Sunlight (En plein soleil, c. 1881), by James Tissot. (Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S., Open Access).

A Children’s Party (c. 1881/82), by James Tissot.

Kathleen Newton modeled for Tissot in the same green tartan gown in Room Overlooking the Harbour, (c. 1876-78 , Private Collection), The Warrior’s Daughter (The Convalescent, c. 1878, Manchester Art Gallery, U.K.), and Richmond Bridge (c. 1878, Private Collection). And, hidden under a vibrant shawl, the dress reappears in A Type of Beauty (Portrait of Kathleen Newton, 1880).

Room Overlooking the Harbour (c. 1876-78), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikiart.org)

the-warrior-s-daughter-or-the-convalescent

The Warrior’s Daughter (The Convalescent, c. 1878), by James Tissot. Manchester Art Gallery, U.K. (Image: Wikiart.org)

A Type of Beauty (Portrait of Kathleen Newton, 1880), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikipedia.org).

the-terrace-of-the-trafalgar-tavern-greenwich-london Kathleen Newton is immediately recognizable in the caped greatcoat that Tissot portrayed her wearing, in numerous paintings including two versions of Waiting for the Ferry (c. 1878), The Ferry (c. 1879, Private Collection), Foreign Visitors to the Louvre (c. 1880), Departure Platform, Victoria Station (c. 1880), “Goodbye” – On the Mersey (c. 1881), The Terrace of the Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London (c. 1878) [left], and By Water (c. 1881-82), and even after her death in The Cab Road, Victoria Station (also known as Departure Platform, Victoria Station, 1895).

The Ferry (c. 1879), by James Tissot.

The Cab Road, Victoria Station (also known as Departure Platform, Victoria Station, 1895), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 58.50 by 30.50 cm.

Mrs. Newton also was immortalized in the elegant black gown, with its high neck and long sleeves and slim Princess line seaming, that Tissot featured in paintings including Hide and Seek (c. 1877, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), L’Été (Summer, 1878), La dame à l’ombrelle, Mme Newton (Woman with a Parasol, Mrs. Newton, c. 1878), Musée Baron Martin, France), The Rivals (I rivali, c. 1878-79, Private Collection), Orphans (L’Orpheline, c. 1879, Private Collection), A Quiet Afternoon (1879), The Gardener (1879), Au bord de la mer (c. 1880), and The Hammock (Le hamac, 1879, Private Collection).

L’ete (Summer, 1878), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikipaintings.org)

Orphans (L’Orpheline, c. 1879), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikiart)

Hide and Seek (c. 1877), by James Tissot. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Of course, Tissot painted many fashionable ensembles in unique images such as The Two Sisters (1863, Musée d’Orsay, France); At the Rifle Range (The Crack Shot, c. 1869, Wimpole Hall, U.K.); A Girl in an Armchair (The Convalescent, 1870, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada); The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth) (c. 1876, Tate Britain, U.K.); and Le bal (Evening, c. 1878, Musée d’Orsay, France). But shrewd man of business that he was, he also was able to create unique images reusing fashions – the summery white gown with the yellow ribbons, Kathleen Newton’s caped greatcoat, and especially that show-stopping black-and-white striped gown – that will be associated forever with James Tissot’s work.

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.

Since today is April Fool’s Day – and my birthday – let’s have a lighthearted look at a prop that James Tissot often used, a tiger skin.

In 1877, Tissot draped a tiger skin over a wide upholstered armchair to underscore the masculinity and dynamism of his sometime art dealer, Algernon Moses Marsden (1847 – 1920). [Marsden actually deserved to be portrayed with a rat skin, as he was a gambler, bankrupt and rogue who foisted his debts on his father and abandoned his wife and ten children. See Who was Algernon Moses Marsden?]

Algernon Moses Marsden (1877), by James Tissot. Private collection. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Other Victorian artists, notably Tissot’s friend Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912) as well as Alma-Tadema’s protégé John William Godward (1861 – 1922), featured tiger skins as an exotic element in sensual paintings of lovely women.

Cherries (1873), by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Private Collection. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

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The Priestess of Bacchus (1885-89), by John Maler Collier (1850-1934). (Image: Wikimedia.org)

The Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day (1891), by John William Godward. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

800px-john_william_godward_-_dolce_far_niente_28189729

Dolce Far Niente (1897), by John William Godward. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

Eighty and Eighteen (1898), by John William Godward. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

James Tissot, so technically skilled and refined, almost never presented open sensuality in his work, especially during the years he painted in England (1871–1882). He used the tiger skin in his paintings for textural complexity and to illustrate the lushness of the Victorian leisured life. After Tissot’s mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854–1882), moved into his home, he added a leopard skin rug to his prop collection.

In Hide and Seek (c. 1877), Tissot featured both the leopard skin and the tiger skin, among many textures including the Oriental porcelain, the two mirrors, the leather-armed chaise, the polished wooden occasional table, and the round enameled table in the foreground.

Hide and Seek (c. 1877), by James Tissot. 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

In Reading a Story (c. 1878-79), the leopard skin is tossed over a bench in Tissot’s garden:

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

In 1880, it lines Mrs. Newton’s chair in A Type of Beauty.

A Type of Beauty (Portrait of Kathleen Newton, 1880), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikipedia.org).

The leopard skin is draped neatly over the garden bench in pictures from 1881 to 1882:

Quiet (c. 1881), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Image: Wikiart.org)

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

Tissot also shows the leopard skin used as the family picnic rug, c. 1881.

In Full Sunlight (En plein soleil, c. 1881), by James Tissot. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Open Access.

How prim Tissot, the Frenchman, seems compared to the Dutch-born Alma-Tadema!

1200px-tepidarium_lawrence_alma-tadema_281836-191229

The Tepidarium (1881), by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

By 1882, enjoying his domestic life with Kathleen Newton and her two children, Tissot’s tiger skin is emblematic of the exuberance of their days – which would end with Kathleen’s death of tuberculosis in November.

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)

But while James Tissot did not use his tiger skin in erotic images, he did use it to create one with an improving moral message.

Triumph of Will: The Challenge (1877), by James Tissot. (Image: Wikiart.org)

Even in La femme préhistorique (The Prehistoric Woman), Tissot shuns the opportunity to paint an erotic semi-nude primitive; he veers off with his own idiosyncratic approach.

La femme prehistorique, by James Tissot. (Image: Wikimedia.org)

But, then, at least Tissot never inflicted this type of image upon posterity:

Autumn Flowers, by Jehan Georges Vibert (1840 – 1902). (Image: Wikiart.org)

Thank you for celebrating my birthday with me, and please enjoy other posts on my blog as well as my novel about James Tissot, The Hammock!

Previous April Fool’s Day posts:

The Missing Tissot Nudes

Was James Tissot a Plagiarist?

Tissot and his Friends Clown Around

Happy Hour with James Tissot

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.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may recall this story:

Study for The Dreamer (or, Summer Evening, c. 1876), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

James Tissot painted Kathleen Newton in the study above [called The Dreamer] about 1876, selling it for £206 as Rêverie at the Dudley Gallery in London. In the 1920s, a man bought it “for a few pounds.” In 1984, the man’s daughter brought the picture to a valuation day at Woodbridge Community Hall in Suffolk, England. She had no idea what it was, but said, “It has been on the wall for as long as I can remember. My dad always used to poke around the sale rooms and this just came home. I can’t remember when. The story always was that he bought it because it reminded him of my mother, they both had the same auburn colored hair. Nobody knew anything about it in the family. We had it re-framed, and while it was at the framer’s somebody offered us £600 for it and so we thought we should get it looked at professionally.” A Sotheby’s representative at the valuation day said, “I remember turning round to say something to my secretary and when I turned back again this gentleman had put the picture down on the table in front of me. I remember taking one look at it and thinking to myself, “My God, a Tissot.”

What I haven’t mentioned is the way the Sotheby’s representative, Mark Armstrong, recognized the painting as a work by French painter James Tissot. Can you guess? No, it was not the familiar face of Tissot’s mistress and muse, the young divorcée Kathleen Newton (1854–1882). Mr. Armstrong asked the gentleman who owned the painting if he realized what it was, and when the man shook his head, he explained, “Certain things are always recognizable in these pictures, like the wicker chair for instance. Then when I saw [Tissot’s] signature and monogram, I honestly just could not believe it. It’s the kind of thing that makes these days come alive.”

Wicker, or woven, furniture was a new consumer good by James Tissot’s adult years.

Although wicker furniture first arrived in America on the Mayflower, production of wicker furniture in the United States began in the 1840s, after the Chinese opened a number of treaty ports to foreign trade. Clipper ships from China brought cargo to America with raw cane rattan used as dunnage to secure it and prevent shifting. This raw cane would then be discarded at the docks. In 1844, an enterprising young grocer, Cyrus Wakefield (1811 – 1873), pondered uses for the large quantities of abandoned rattan at Constitution Wharf in Boston. He realized how flexible the cane was, and after bending the rattan to produce a chair, he saw the potential of the material.

Wakefield soon began to import his own clipper ships full of rattan, which was in great demand by basket and furniture makers. By 1851, he started making furniture from woven rattan, and it became popular.

In 1855, Wakefield and his wife left Boston and moved to South Reading [renamed Wakefield in 1868], Massachusetts, where he established the Wakefield Rattan Company. He continued to sell the imported rattan throughout the United States and to experiment with techniques to construct wicker furniture. Bending oak or hickory into frames wrapped with split cane, the flowing shapes were filled with ornate rattan patterns.

Previously, the inner core, or the reed, of the rattan plant had been discarded, but Cyrus Wakefield and others began experimenting with the use of reed. In 1856, civil unrest in China resulted in a cutoff of the rattan supply, which led to more experimentation using the reed; it was discovered that reed but was porous and could be painted or stained.

The Wakefield Rattan Company expanded during the 1860s and virtually cornered the market on hand-woven furniture. But toward the end of the decade, a loom was created that sped production of the furniture by automatically weaving and installing the chair seats.

In the early 1870’s, products manufactured by the Wakefield Rattan Company included “chairs for ladies, gentlemen and children, cradle, cribs, tete-a-tete and sofas,” as well as matting, baskets, baby carriages, window shades, brooms, clothes beaters, hoops for ladies’ skirts, and many other items. [Click here to see an advertisement c. 1872.]

Tissot moved to London in mid-1871, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the Bloody Paris Commune. In 1873, he bought the lease on a medium-sized, two-storey Queen Anne-style villa, built of red brick with white Portland stone dressing, at 17 (now 44), Grove End Road, in the leafy suburb of St. John’s Wood. The house was set in a large and private garden separating him from the horse traffic, omnibuses and pedestrians on their way to the Regent’s Park or the still-new Underground Railway station nearby.

In 1873, Tissot featured the same curvaceous bentwood rocking chair with a woven-cane seat and back in two of his paintings, A Visit to the Yacht and The Last Evening.

James-Jacques-Joseph_Tissot_s_A_Visit_to_the_Yacht,_Sotheby's.

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

The Last Evening (1873), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 28.3 by 40.6 in. (72 by 103 cm). The Guildhall Art Gallery, London. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

About 1874, in the face of rumors that Tissot was a Communard, he painted a dual portrait of the exiled French empress and her son, which seemingly refutes the charge. In The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst, Tissot depicts the exiled royals risen from lightweight wicker readings chairs. In the autumnal scene, the portable chairs strike an ephemeral note.

In 1875, Tissot built an extension with a studio and huge conservatory that doubled the size of his house.

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

In In the Conservatory (The Rivals, c. 1875), Tissot features the back of a substantial, circular roll-back wicker armchair, with its elegant herringbone pattern shown in full detail.

The Wakefield Rattan Company participated in the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, which was attended by nearly a quarter of the population of the United States. Since middle-class American families were just beginning to move to suburban and country homes, there was a demand for informal furniture for porches, summer homes and even parlors. [Click here to read more on the Wakefield Rattan Company.]

From the 1870s through the late 1890s, the Wakefield Rattan Company faced fierce competition from another furniture maker, Heywood Brothers Company of Gardner, Massachusetts. Both companies offered increasingly original and elaborate designs with outstanding craftsmanship, and wicker furniture, which was sturdy, lightweight, and elegant, became increasingly popular.

Wicker furniture also became fashionable in Victorian England, in part because it was considered sanitary. Unlike upholstered furniture, wicker was easy to clean and did not collect dust.

Tissot designed his garden with a blend of English-style flower beds as well as plantings familiar to him from French parks. He added an ornamental pond and a cast iron colonnade, copied from the Parc Monceau in Paris, which ran in a curve from the south side of the pool towards the house. A similar curved colonnade ran from the east end of the pool.

The bay window of Tissot’s new studio overlooked this idyllic landscape, which he enjoyed and painted repeatedly.

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.

In Tissot’s The Convalescent (c. 1876), two women model in a grouping of three comfortable wicker armchairs by his garden pool; the third chair is reserved slyly with a man’s hat and cane.

The convalescing woman’s chair, with its squared back, round base, flat armrests and vertical supports, is so similar to the chairs in The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial that they either were purchased from the same source, or possibly owned by Tissot and transported to Chislehurst for the portrait setting.

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

In Holyday (c. 1876), the elderly chaperone minds her own business in a wicker chair to the left while a youthful group picnics at the side of Tissot’s garden pool.

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)

A lightweight wicker dining set is shown in the back of this garden in The Letter (c. 1878), said to be set in the Dutch Gardens of Holland House in London.

Here’s the interesting thing – or one of them, anyway: Tissot’s career spanned forty-three years, from 1859, when the 23-year-old launched his career in Paris, competing with established artists by exhibiting five entries in the Salon, until his death in 1902, while he still was working on an illustrated Old Testament (published in 1904). Yet the wicker chair(s) so associated with his work appeared only in his paintings during nine of the years within his London period, 1871 to 1882, which overlaps the six years, 1876 to 1882, when Kathleen Newton lived with him in his elegant St. John’s Wood villa in London.

In those nine years, Tissot painted fewer than two dozen pictures that include a wicker armchair, chaise, or stool.

800px-James_Tissot_-_Kathleen_Newton_In_An_Armchair

Kathleen Newton in an Armchair (1878), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 12 by 17 in. (30.5 by 43.2 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In Kathleen Newton in an Armchair (1878), Tissot features a wicker reading chair in the corner of his studio, overlooking his garden. With its flat armrests, this chair is similar in design to the chairs in The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874) and The Convalescent (c. 1876), but this chair has a slightly arched back, unlike the squared back of the other chairs.

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

In Rivals (1878-1879), Tissot’s wicker reading chair has been moved to the conservatory so Mrs. Newton may lounge while modeling. The older gentleman sits in a wicker chair as well.

The wicker pieces offered an interesting textural contrast within Tissot’s compositions.

Hide and Seek (1877), by James Tissot. 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

In Hide and Seek (1877), Kathleen Newton reads the paper while lounging in the wicker reading chair in the corner of his elegant studio, where French doors open into the garden.

La sœur aînée (The Elder Sister), c. 1881, by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 17.5 by 8 in. (44.45 by 20.32 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: http://www.the-athenaeum.org/)

The lacy, lightweight wicker chair in La sœur aînée (The Elder Sister, c. 1881), easily could be moved in and out of the house.

James Tissot, one of the first artists to use photography as the basis for his oil paintings, and who kept a photographic record of all his works, was a thoroughly modern man. The wicker furniture that he owned and portrayed in his paintings is, like his depiction of current female and male fashions, one more sign of his contemporary style.

Kathleen Newton at the Piano (c. 1881), by James Tissot. Private Collection. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

In this oil study, Kathleen Newton at the Piano (c. 1881), she is seated on a wicker stool covered in a heavy cloth.

When Kathleen Newton died of tuberculosis on November 9, 1882, at age 28, Tissot returned to Paris after the funeral the following week. Within a year, he sold his London villa to the Dutch-born painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912).

Never again did James Tissot’s paintings feature the graceful wicker furniture of his leisured life in London.

Related posts:

Tissot in the Conservatory

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

James Tissot’s house at St. John’s Wood, London

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.

Among the recurring props that James Tissot used in his oil paintings, including the tiger skin, the leopard fur, certain striking gowns, and numerous wicker chairs, were fringed woolen blankets, most often one in a red tartan.

The first use he made of a blanket as a device to add color and visual interest to his composition was in The Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their children (1865): in this case, a fringed red and white checked picnic cloth, or table cover, is draped over the stone wall behind the French aristocrat’s young son, Léon.

The Marquis and Marquise de Miramon and their children (1865), by James Tissot. Musee d’Orsay, Paris. www.the-athenaeum.org

After Tissot emigrated to London in mid-1871, rebuilding his career following the Franco-Prussian War and the bloody Commune uprising in Paris, one of the first oils he painted and exhibited in this new market featured a subdued brown and white striped lap rug, appropriate to the palette, in Gentleman in a Railway Carriage (1872).

gentleman-in-a-railway-carriage-jpglarge

Gentleman in a Railway Carriage (1872), by James Tissot. The Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts. (Photo: Wikiart.org)

Tissot, ever the shrewd man of business, understood that he now had to paint for an entirely new clientele. While British aristocrats did not purchase the Frenchman’s paintings, plenty of newly-wealthy businessmen sought his work as they enhanced their social status by building art collections. Tissot had to appeal to Victorian tastes, in an empire ruled by a Queen whose beloved retreat was Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire.

Soon, he began to feature Scottish tartan blankets in his paintings. He used the same fringed tartan blanket in The Captain and the Mate (1873) and The Last Evening (1873). In these pictures as well as A Visit to the Yacht (1873), the blanket is a prop that provides an enlivening splash of red in the composition and sets off the adjacent gown.

In The Captain’s Daughter (1873), a black and white checked blanket is draped over the wooden railing under the woman’s arm, providing visual interest between the water and her dark floral dress.

The Captain and the Mate, (1873), by James Tissot. The Captain and the Mate (1873), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 53.6 by 76.2 cm. Private Collection. Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in “The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot,” © 2012 Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library for use in The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, © 2012

The Last Evening (1873), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 28.3 by 40.6 in. (72 by 103 cm). The Guildhall Art Gallery, London. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

A Visit to the Yacht (c. 1873), by James Tissot. Private Collection.

The Captain’s Daughter (1873), by James Tissot. www.the-athenaeum.org

Tissot then begins to use this prop with some psychological sophistication. In The Return from the Boating Trip (1873) and Waiting at the Station, Willesden Junction (1874), the tartan blanket not only provides the red necessary to the composition, but it adds a note of modern self-reliance to the women holding it. With the blanket draped over their arms, Tissot depicts them providing for their own needs and ensuring their own comfortable mobility.

The Return from the Boating Trip (1873), by James Tissot. Private Collection.

Waiting at the Station (Willesden Junction, 1874), by James Tissot. Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand. www.the-athenaeum.org

Later in the decade, Tissot uses a red tartan blanket as a fashion statement. In The Thames (c. 1876), the woman on the left has covered her gown quite elegantly with it.

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 Portsmouth Dockyard (1877), the woman on the right has wrapped Tissot’s tartan blanket over her shoulders and torso; it echoes the color and pattern of the Highlander’s uniform and hose. The woman on the left carries a black and white blanket that matches her ensemble.

Portsmouth Dockyard (How Happy I Could be with Either, c. 1877), by James Tissot. Tate Britain, London. www.the-athenaeum.org

By the end of the decade, Tissot uses two different tartan blankets, one wrapped around a woman and another swaddling her baby, in a painting with an overall red palette that evokes a palpable sense of danger and excitement, The Emigrants (c. 1879).

The Emigrants (c. 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on panel, 15.5 by 7 in. (39.4 by 17.8 cm). Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

After a decade of using a traveling blanket to add interest to various oil paintings, Tissot reverted to relying on it for a splash of color, as in By Water (Waiting at Dockside, c. 1881-82).

By Water (Waiting at Dockside, c. 1881-82), by James Tissot.

Just as he painted women’s fashions so skillfully, James Tissot showcased his extraordinary technical skills when portraying patterns such as stripes, checks and plaids. He made efficient use of the red tartan blanket prop for color, visual interest, psychological insight, and a clever appeal to his British clients.

Related posts:

Victorians on the Move, by James Tissot

Tissot in the U.S.: The Speed Museum, Kentucky

Tissot’s Study for the family of the Marquis de Miramon (1865)

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.

James Tissot often reused models, both male and female, in his paintings. While he varied their poses to capture different angles of their faces, several of his models are recognizable from picture to picture within a few years’ time. In some cases, subsequent paintings seem based on sketches for earlier works.

The brunette with the languid eyelids in The Two Sisters (1863, figure a) also appears in Portrait of Mademoiselle L.L., (1864, figure b) and Spring (1865, figure c). Tissot painted these pictures in Paris, in the waning years of the Second Empire.

a Image -- James_Tissot_-_Two_Sisters, cropped face b portrait-of-mlle-l-l-young-lady-in-a-red-jacket-1864, cropped face c Spring, the-athenaeum, cropped faceA

After Tissot moved to London, following the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, he painted another model, a pale woman with strawberry-blonde hair, in Les Adieux (The Farewells, 1871, figure a), the woman on the left in Bad News (The Parting, 1872, figure b), and a variant of that painting, Tea (1872, figure c).

a bag-4346-les-adieux-bridgeman-art-8-7-12, cropped face b 925px-James_Tissot_-_Bad_News, cropped face c tea-time, wiki art, cropped face

By 1873, Tissot befriended a ship’s captain, John Freebody, and his young wife, Margaret Freebody (née Kennedy), as well as her brother, Captain Lumley Kennedy. All three modeled for him that year in The Last Evening, The Captain and the Mate, and Boarding the Yacht (see James Tissot, ed. Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, 1985).

In these delightful paintings, the cast of characters includes an old man with eccentric white whiskers, and a young girl who also appears in A Visit to the Yacht (c. 1873). [See For sale: A Visit to the Yacht, c. 1873, by James Tissot.]

The Last Evening (1873), by James Tissot. Margaret (Kennedy) Freebody and her brother, Captain Lumley Kennedy, posed for the figures in the chairs on the right. Margaret’s husband, Captain Freebody, is the man with the red beard.

Boarding the Yacht (1873), by James Tissot. Margaret (Kennedy) Freebody modeled for the woman on the right, and her sister for the woman on the left.

The Captain and the Mate (1873), by James Tissot. Margaret (Kennedy) Freebody sits on the left with her husband, Captain John Freebody, and her brother, Captain Lumley Kennedy is in the center.

The Captain’s Daughter (1873), by James Tissot. The woman is portrayed by Margaret (Kennedy) Freebody.

Tissot relied on a new model for Waiting for the Ferry at the Falcon Tavern (1874, figure a) and London Visitors (c. 1874, figure b).

a Waiting for the Ferry, Speed Museum version, the-athenaeum, cropped woman face b london-visitors, wikiart, cropped woman face

Tissot featured another lovely model, with an exquisite pointed nose, in Reading the News (1874, figure a), Chrysanthemums (c. 1874-76, figure b) and Still on Top (c. 1874, figure c).

a 612px-James_Tissot_-_Reading_the_News, cropped woman b James_Tissot_-_Chrysanthemums, cropped c James_Tissot_-_Still_on_Top_-_Google_Art_Project, cropped

A model with a soft fringe appears in Tissot’s A Passing Storm (c. 1876, figure a) and A Convalescent (c. 1876, figure b).

a 912px-James_Tissot_-_A_Passing_Storm, cropped b sag-65029-a-convalescent-bridgeman-art-8-7-12, cropped girl face

The blonde woman in Autumn on the Thames, Nuneham Courtney (c. 1871-72, figure a) reappears years later, in Quarreling (c. 1874-76, figure b). Tissot also featured her in The Bunch of Lilacs (c. 1875, figure c).

I believe the model for these pictures was Alice, British painter Louise Jopling’s lovely blonde sister, who had attracted Tissot’s interest. Louise (1843–1933) wrote of Tissot in her 1925 autobiography, “He admired my sister Alice very much, and he asked her to sit to him, in the pretty house in St. John’s Wood.” In this photograph of Louise and her sisters, look at the blonde on the left, in the back, and compare for yourself!

a autumn-on-the-thames, cropped face b quarrelling, cropped face c The Bunch of Lilacs, the-athenaeum, cropped face

That does make me wonder if Louise Jopling [at that time, the recently widowed Mrs. Frank Romer] modeled for Tissot. She wrote in her autobiography, “James Tissot was a charming man, very handsome, extraordinarily like the Duke [then, Prince] of Teck. He was always well groomed, and had nothing of artistic carelessness either in his dress or demeanor.” She thought Tissot was “extraordinarily clever,” and wrote that one day, before she was married (in 1874, to J.E. Millais’ friend, Joe Jopling), Tissot had begged his friend Ferdinand Heilbuth (1826 – 1889) to go to Louise’s studio “and try to induce us both – my sister Alice and I – to come and spend the day at Greenwich, where he was painting his charming pictures of scenes by the river Thames. I was to bring my sketching materials. It happened that I had promised Joe to give him a sitting for my portrait, but it was much too delightful a project not to be accepted with fervor. I wired to Joe: ‘Called out of town on business.’ I might have, with more truth, wired: ‘Called out of town on pleasure,’ but sketching with two such good artists was indeed good business for me, so I salved my conscience. But I was found out: Joe heard of our day’s outing, probably at that mart of gossip, a man’s Club.” [Louise Jopling is a character in my book, The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot – see my short (2:42 min.) video, “Louise Jopling and James Tissot”.]

Here is the model in Tissot’s Return from the Boating Party (1873, figure a), and Louise Jopling as Millais painted her in 1879 at age 36 (figure b). It does seem, however, that Louise would have mentioned in her autobiography that Tissot had painted her.

a the-return-from-the-boating-trip, wikiart, cropped woman face b 1200px-Louise_Jane_Jopling_(née_Goode,_later_Rowe)_by_Sir_John_Everett_Millais,_1st_Bt, wikimedia, cropped face

Tissot used an older, white-haired woman as a model in Hush! (The Concert, 1875, figure a), A Convalescent (c. 1876, figure b), and also at the far left in Holyday (c 1876, figure c).

a Hush, The Concert, the-athenaeum, cropped matron b sag-65029-a-convalescent-bridgeman-art-8-7-12, cropped matron face c Holyday, the-athenaeum, cropped matron

Tissot painted a striking model with dark hair and strong eyebrows in A Portrait (1876, figure a), and again in a blue gown in The Gallery of the H.M.S. Calcutta (Portsmouth, c. 1876, figure b). She reappears in Portsmouth Dockyard (c. 1877, figure c).

a portrait-of-miss-lloyd, cropped face b The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth) c.1876 by James Tissot 1836-1902 c Portsmouth Dockyard circa 1877 by James Tissot 1836-1902

One of Tissot’s most often-reused models is the old gentleman with the white whiskers. He appears in Reading the News (1874, figure a), in the center of The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874, figure b), and at the left in Hush! (The Concert, 1875, figure c), as well as in The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent, c. 1878, figure d).

a 612px-James_Tissot_-_Reading_the_News, cropped man b Ball on Shipboard, the-athenaeum, cropped old man face c Hush, The Concert, the-athenaeum, cropped old man face d the-warrior-s-daughter-or-the-convalescent, cropped

Another distinctive male model who reappears Tissot’s paintings is the man with a long ginger beard in London Visitors (c. 1874, figure a) and at the far left in Holyday (c. 1876, figure b). He also is featured in The Widower (1876, figure c).

a London Visitors, the-athenaeum, cropped man face b Holyday, the-athenaeum, cropped man face c James_Tissot_-_The_Widower_-_Google_Art_Project, cropped

Of course, after she moved into his home in St. John’s Wood about 1876, Tissot’s main model until her premature death was young mother and divorcée, Kathleen Irene Ashburnham Kelly Newton (1854 – 1882).

Kathleen, at 22, had a four-year-old daughter and a son born on March 21, 1876. [See Was Cecil Newton James Tissot’s son?] Being Roman Catholic, Kathleen could not remarry, but she lived with Tissot in his house in St. John’s Wood, until her death from tuberculosis in 1882.

Kathleen appeared in dozens of Tissot’s major works, including Portsmouth Dockyard (c. 1877, figure a), The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent, c. 1878, figure b), and Orphans (c. 1879, figure c).

a Portsmouth Dockyard circa 1877 by James Tissot 1836-1902 b the-warrior-s-daughter-or-the-convalescent, cropped Kathleen Newton c orphan, cropped Kathleen face

912px-James_Tissot_-_A_Passing_Storm, cropped

A Passing Storm (detail)

Incidentally, Tissot scholar Michael Wentworth (1938 – 2002), in his comprehensive biography James Tissot (1984), identified the model in A Passing Storm (c. 1876) as Kathleen Newton, but if you compare the features of this model to Kathleen’s, it is obvious that the two women are different.

Based on my research and this study of the faces of Tissot’s various models, I believe Kathleen Newton’s first appearance in his work was in Portsmouth Dockyard (c. 1877).

Portsmouth Dockyard circa 1877 by James Tissot 1836-1902

Which means that the shadowy face in the center of The Thames (1876), would have been Kathleen’s as well.

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.

Here she is in The Warrior’s Daughter (A Convalescent, c. 1878).

the-warrior-s-daughter-or-the-convalescent

And here is Kathleen in Orphans (c. 1879). Her face and slender figure would grace his work for only a few more years.

orphan

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.

Oil paintings by James Tissot registered with the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal (NEPIP)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Aristocrats (1865 – 1868)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Officers, soldiers & sailors (1868 – 1883/85)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: The Casual Male (1871 – 1878)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Sportsmen & Servants (1874 – 1885)

Masculine Fashion, by James Tissot: Gentlemen & Rogues (1865 – 1879)

James Tissot’s Cloisonné

James Tissot’s Fashion Plates (1864-1878): A Guest Post for Mimi Matthews by Lucy Paquette

*Don’t own a Kindle? Amazon.com has free Kindle reading apps!

A Closer Look at Tissot’s “The Fan”

A Closer Look: The Circus Lover (The Amateur Circus), by James Tissot

Tissot’s Study for the family of the Marquis de Miramon (1865)

James Tissot in Mourning

James Tissot’s Mourners at Auction

A James Tissot Chronology, by Lucy Paquette for The Victorian Web

References

James Tissot (1836-1902): a brief biography by Lucy Paquette for The Victorian Web

Bibliography

The Artist’s Closet: James Tissot’s Prop Costumes

Tissot’s Tiger Skin: A Prominent Prop

Wicker: James Tissot’s Modern Prop Furniture

A Proper British Prop: Tissot’s Tartan Blanket

James Tissot’s Models à la Mode