James Tissot - En Plein Soleil [c.1881]

James Tissot - En Plein Soleil [c.1881], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This group portrait includes the artist's companion, Kathleen Newton, at left, her children, Cecil George Newton and Muriel Mary Violet Newton, and two unidentified figures, who may be Kathleen's elder sister, Mary Hervey, and one of her daughters, Isabelle or Lilian. The setting appears to be Tissot's garden in St. John's Wood, London. Based on at least one photograph taken by Tissot, this composition was originally known only by means of the artist's etching after the painting.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art - Oil on wood, 24.8 x 35.2 cm]

James Tissot - In the Conservatory [c.1875-78]

James Tissot - In the Conservatory [c.1875-78], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Although the artist's given title for this painting is lost, it is clearly a comedy of manners, Tissot's favourite English narrative subject, involving twin sisters, their mother, a potential suitor, and a further pair of figures whose identities are less obvious. 

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 38.1 x 50.8 cm]

James Tissot - Tea [1872]

James Tissot - Tea [1872], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

When Tissot moved to London in 1871, he immersed himself in the local scene, with work for Vanity Fair and genre paintings with the river Thames as backdrop. Tea is a repetition of the left-hand portion of one of his most famous London scenes, Bad News (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff), which shows a captain and his girlfriend absorbing the news of his imminent departure while a companion prepares tea. Bad News shows the Pool of London through the tavern windows, while Tea displays the dense London cityscape beyond that stretch of the river. Tissot's friend Edgar Degas owned a pencil study for this picture.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on wood, 66 x 47.9 cm]

James Tissot - Women of Paris, The Circus Lover [1885]

James Tissot - Women of Paris, The Circus Lover [1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Like the Impressionists, particularly his friend Edgar Degas, Tissot chose his subjects from modern urban life. His precise, detailed, and anecdotal style, however, was more closely related to conservative academic painting. This work belongs to a series called La Femme à Paris (Women of Paris), eighteen large paintings that depict women of different social classes encountered as if by chance at various occupations and amusements. Here, the woman engages the viewer as a participant in the action by her direct glance out of the picture. The event is a "high-life circus," in which the amateur performers were members of the aristocracy.

[Oil on canvas, 147.3 x 101.6 cm]

James Tissot - Young Woman in a Boat [1870]

James Tissot - Young Woman in a Boat [1870], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Tissot is famous for his exquisite paintings of beautiful English women and most people think he was English. In fact Jacques-Joseph Tissot was born in Nantes, then a thriving port on the Loire estuary in western France. He adopted the name James as an anglicised form when living in England. His friends were Manet and Degas, with whom he shared a teacher in the painting school in Paris. 

[Oil on canvas]

James Tissot - Holiday [c.1876]

Yellowing leaves of the chestnut tree shade a group of well-dressed men and women who are enjoying a picnic beside a pond. The canvas, painted in the backyard of Tissot’s London house which was near Lord’s Cricket Ground, sparkles with colour and exquisite detail. In his depiction of daily life in an outdoor setting, Tissot shares the realism of French artists such as Eduoard Manet. His style is also akin to that of the Impressionists, who were working at exactly the same time as Tissot, but his paintings differ in their crystal-clear vision and elegant society subjects. Tissot often focused on finely dressed women, adorned in the latest fashions and casting a spell over their men. His paintings have recently enjoyed a well-deserved revival in popularity; for many years they were regarded as the epitome of late Victorian vacuous and decadent society.

[Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 99.5 cm]