Tissot, James

Tissot, James (1836-1902). French painter and graphic artist. Early in
his career he painted historical costume pieces, but in about 1864 he turned
with great success to scenes of contemporary life, usually involving
fashionable women. Following his alleged involvement in the turbulent events of
the Paris Commune (1871) he took refuge in London, where he lived from 1871 to
1882. He was just as successful there as he had been in Paris and lived in some
style in St John's Wood; in 1874 Edmond de Goncourt wrote sarcastically that he
had `a studio with a waiting room where, at all times, there is iced champagne
at the disposal of visitors, and around the studio, a garden where, all day
long, one can see a footman in silk stockings brushing and shining the
shrubbery leaves'.

His
pictures are distinguished most obviously by his love of painting women's
costumes: indeed, his work--which has a fashion-plate elegance and a
chocolate-box charm-- has probably been more often reproduced in works on the
history of costume than on the history of painting. He also, however, had a
gift for wittily observing nuances of social behavior. In 1882, following the
death of his mistress Kathleen Newton (the archetypal Tissot model-- beautiful
but rather vacant), he returned to France. In 1888 he underwent a religious
conversion when he went into a church to `catch the atmosphere for a picture',
and thereafter he devoted himself to religious subjects. He visited the Holy
Land in 1886-87 and in 1889, and his illustrations to the events of the Bible
were enormously popular, both in book form and when the original drawings were
exhibited.

For many
years after his death Tissot was considered a grossly vulgar artist, bug there
has been a recent upsurge of interest in him, expressed in sale-room prices for
his work as well as in numerous books and exhibitions devoted to him.

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