If you want to see fine paintings, visit more provincial galleries. While they don’t have many van Goghs, Rembrandts or Vermeers, you will have the chance to see some of the best paintings by artists whose work isn’t as overvalued. This weekend I look at a small selection of narrative works by the Anglo-French artist James Tissot, a contemporary of the Impressionists. Since his death in 1902, his work initially fell into deep disfavour, but in the late twentieth century became more popular again.

Jacques Joseph Tissot was born in the busy port of Nantes, in the north-west of France, in 1836. His father was a prosperous draper there, dealing daily with women’s fashions and apparel. The young Tissot resolved to become a painter when he was seventeen, but it took a further three years before he could persuade his family to allow him to study in Paris. He had also become an Anglophile, and adopted the name of James at about that time.

In Paris, he first stayed with a family friend, the painter Élie Delaunay (1828-1891), and studied under Hippolyte Flandrin briefly, and for several years under Louis Lamothe, both former pupils of JAD Ingres. Although Lamothe’s work is now forgotten, he also taught Edgar Degas, and ensured Tissot’s technical brilliance. The young Tissot also became friends with Whistler, Degas, and Manet. His first successful submission to the Salon was in 1859, when he was fascinated by the Middle Ages.

His Dance of Death or the Way of Flowers, Way of Tears was among his paintings exhibited at the Salon in 1860, and one of that series based on the Middle Ages.

At this time, he started a series of scenes based on Goethe’s Faust. In this he was influenced by another largely forgotten painter, the Belgian Baron Henri Leys (1815-1869). Tissot loved this historical romanticism, which was also becoming popular in the work of Delaroche, Gérôme, Ingres, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Britain.

The best-known painting of the introduction of Gretchen into Goethe’s play is that by James Tissot in the Musée d’Orsay. I haven’t been able to locate an image of that work, Faust Meets Marguerite, from 1860, but above is his signed study for it.

He continued with this carefully executed view of Faust and Marguerite in the Garden (1861), shown here in its finished version, also in the Musée d’Orsay. The couple are sat talking together on a bench, still quite distant, with Gretchen looking intently at a daisy she’s holding.

This scene from Act 4 of Faust, Marguerite in Church (c 1861) shows her cast in the role of the penitent Magdalene, a theme that Tissot was to revisit in his later paintings of the life of Christ. Two innocent children kneel in front of a shrine, praying in the normal and obvious manner. Marguerite’s inner turmoil cannot bring her any closer to that shrine, or even to break herself out of her posture of dejection, eyes cast down, hands apart rather than held together in prayer. Above her is a painting of the Last Judgement, anticipating her own fate in Act 5.

Tissot’s explorations of Faust reached their climax in about 1861, and he next painted a series of much-admired works based on the theme of the prodigal son. These are derived from the parable related by Jesus, told in the Gospel of Luke chapter 15 verses 11-32. This shows the scene most popular among artists of all ages, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1862).

He then abandoned formal narrative painting and started to paint scenes from modern life. By the end of the 1860s, though, life in Paris was clearly changing for the worse, when he painted this young woman practising her skills with firearms At the Rifle Range (1869).

Tissot’s life changed dramatically with the Franco-Prussian War that followed in 1870. He served in the National Guard in the defence of Paris, following which he may have become involved in the Commune, perhaps to protect his own property. When the Commune was suppressed, Tissot fled to London, where he arrived in June 1871 with just a hundred francs to his name.

Tissot painted The Farewells soon after his flight to London that summer. This couple, separated by the iron rails of a closed gate, are in late eighteenth century dress. The man stares intently at the woman, his gloved left hand resting on the spikes along the top of the gate, and his ungloved right hand grasps her left. She plays idly with her clothing with her other hand, and looks down, towards their hands.

Reading her clothing, she is plainly dressed, implying she was a governess, perhaps. A pair of scissors suspended by string on her left side would fit with that, and they’re also symbols of the parting taking place. This is reinforced by the autumn season, and dead leaves at the lower edge of the canvas. However, there is some hope if the floral symbols are accurate: ivy in the lower left is indicative of fidelity and marriage, while holly at the right invokes hope and passion.

In tomorrow’s article, I will show how his art flourished in England.

References

Wikipedia.

English translation of Tissot’s Life of Christ, fully illustrated: volume 1, volume 2.

Dolkart JF (ed) (2009) James Tissot, the Life of Christ, Brooklyn Museum and Merrell. ISBN 978 1 8589 4496 8.
Marshall NR & Warner M (1999) James Tissot, Victorian Life / Modern Love, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 08173 2.
Wood C (1986) Tissot, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978 0 297 79475 2.