James Tissot
French, 1836-1902 (active England)
Foreign Visitors at the Louvre, 1883-1885
oil on canvas
29 x 19 1/2 in.
SBMA, Gift of The Estate of Barbara Darlington Dupee
2015.32.1
An early self portrait of Tissot as a young man from 1865.
“We went to see Tissot, who does very pretty things that he sells at high prices; he is living like a king. We dined there. He is very nice, a very good fellow, though a little vulgar. We are on the best of terms; I paid him many compliments, and he really deserves them.” - Berthe Morisot, in an 1875 letter to her sister, Edma Pontillon
RESEARCH PAPER
In the high ceilinged dark hall named for the Emperor Augustus, visitors are dressed in fashionable Victorian garb as formal as the grand setting. Large marble columns soar up the middle of the hall to the painted domed ceiling. But these are not what capture our attention. Rather, a demure face stares out of the frame with an air of subtle defiance. She stands wasp-waisted wearing a pale cream dress/coat that sinuously echoes the draping of the Empress Livia’s robe posed behind her. This is Kathleen Newton, who was Tissot’s muse, model, and mistress, a beautiful divorcee of Irish descent with two children. She was his Galatea.
She holds up a gold lorgnette in her gloved right hand circled with fur and bright gold bangles. She is not looking at the art, she is boldly looking at us, as if refusing to hide from the scandal of her position. Two aristocratic men in supremely confident poses are admiring the antiquities. Their faces full of pride and appreciation of the great treasures that have been looted from ancient sites described in the bright white guide-book that one of them holds in his hand. Miss Newton and her companions are surrounded by Roman busts, reliefs, and full length sculptures. Through the arched doorway, two men stand by a large statue of Augustus.
The three principal figures are crowded in the right side of the painting. The overall colors are rich and somber except for the light in the window behind Augustus which causes bright splashes on the gallery’s marble floor. There are also the delicate skin tones on Miss Newton’s face and the backlit contour of her elegant dress. It is a superbly painted, realistically depicted “moment”, much like the genre paintings of the Dutch masters. Tissot utilized windows as a backdrop in many of his works demonstrating remarkable control of light and shadow. Despite such beautifully executed details as found in the older man’s bearded face and the carefully trimmed sideburns of the younger man, Tissot also employs Impressionist techniques. We note the treatment of the ceiling, the columns and the loose brush strokes of the marble floors. The cropping of the figures suggests the influence of Japanese woodblock prints that were so admired by the Impressionists. The black triangle of shoes set in a larger triangle on the lower right is another example of the influence of Japanese techniques.
“Foreign Visitors at the Louvre” also shows Tissot’s mastery of composition and chiaroscuro. The calculated rhyming between the fashionably attired Miss Newton, and the sculpture of the Empress Livia reveals Victorian society’s greed for antiquities and the allure of the tightly corseted beautiful woman.
While studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1856, Tissot was greatly influenced by Ingre’s neo-classical style. He made friends with Whistler, Manet and Degas and was invited to show in their first Exhibition, but he remained true to the conventional academic style taught at his art school.
Born in the French west coast port city of Nantes in 1836, his father was a successful drapery maker and his mother was a milliner. His perfect rendering of women’s clothing may well be attributed to this early exposure to fabrics and couture. He was enormously successful as a Parisian society painter. Baudelaire called him “Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne”. (K.Lochman)
In the turmoil following the 1871 Franco Prussian War and the subsequent civil unrest, Tissot fled to London to avoid arrest, even anglicizing his name from Jacques to James, for he had sympathized with the Commune, the ill-fated temporary government erected by socialist revolutionaries. In London he became the greatest society painter of the Nouveau Riche, turning out endless scenes of fashionable women. His success aroused much jealousy among his Impressionist colleagues in France who viewed his art as shallow, painted photographs of high fashion. In 1877 John Ruskin, the art critic wrote “Most of them are, unhappily mere coloured photos of vulgar society.” (M.Wentworth)
Tissot lived seven blissful years with Kathleen Newton until her death from consumption. He returned to Paris broken-hearted. It is thought this work was painted after her death in1881. His loving rendering of Kathleen make it a fine complement to Wm. Merit Chase’s adoring portrait of his wife“Lady in Pink,” and for comparisons of facial detail see Bouguereau’s “Mademoiselle Hoskier”. For dramatic contrast, the dark moodiness of Breton’s interior of “Le Pardon” is a perfect counter to the elegance of the visitors at the Louvre.
After Newton’s death Tissot became interested in spiritualism. From then on he devoted most of his artistic energies to religious subjects including enormous biblical illustration projects. Tissot’s art sank into obscurity after his own death in 1902. In the 1960’s there was a revival of interest in this “artistic hybrid suspended between the French and English schools and their respective avant-garde academic movements” (M.Wentworth).
Tissot’s “particular form of modernity focused on complicated relationships… rendered in a highly detailed style that appeals to both the psychological and aesthetic tastes of our own era” (N.R. Marshall).
Prepared for the SBMA Docent Council by Josie Martins, July 2014
Bibliography
Forster, Patricia A., “James Tissot”, monograph, SBMA Docent, 1998
Joseph, James Jacques, “Tissot”, monograph, Paul Ripley, Art Renewal Center Museum
www.artrenewal.org
Lochman, K., “Seductive Surfaces-The Art of Tissot”, Yale University Press, 1999
Marshall and Warne , “Victorian Life/Modern Love”, The American Federation of Arts, New York, 1999.
Misfeldt, Willard, “Grove Dictionary of Art”, Oxford University Press, 1996
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, “James Tissot”, SBMA INFORM #1745, 1/22/98.
www.metmuseum.org/the-collection-online/search/436144 - Image of Tissot by Degas
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Calendar, Jan-March 2014
Wentworth, Michael J., “Tissot”, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1978.
Wikipedia.org/wikijames-Tissot#mediaviewer/file
Wood, Christopher, “Victorian Painting”, Bullfinch Press, 2000.
Portrait of Tissot in his studio by Edgar Degas, 1867.
COMMENTS
French painter, illustrator and etcher, born at Nantes. Studied from c.1856 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Lamothe and H. Flandrin; became friendly with Whistler and Degas. Early influenced by Henri Leys and painted pictures of Faust and Marguerite. Later turned to scenes from contemporary life, especially of fashionable women, under the influence of Manet and Alfred Stevens. Took part in the defence of Paris and the Commune and was obliged to flee to London in 1871. Exhibited at the Royal Academy 1864 and 1872-81, and at the Grosvenor Gallery 1877-9. His paintings of the Thames were influenced by Whistler. Declined an invitation from Degas to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Returned to Paris in 1883, and had his first one-man exhibition that year at the Palais de l'Industrie there. Visited Palestine in 1886-7 and 1889 and devoted the rest of his life to illustrating the Bible, his illustrations being enormously successful. Died at Buillon, near Besançon.
- Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.718