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James Tissot
(1836-1902)
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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