James Tissot

Le Matin - Etching by James Tissot - 1886

1886

James Jacques Joseph Tissot (October 15, 1836 - August 8, 1902) was a French painter. Tissot was born at Nantes. He studied at the Êcole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Ingres, Flandrin and Lamothe, and exhibited in the Paris Salon for the first time at the age of twenty-three. In 1855 Tissot moved to Paris where he studied under Jules-Élie Delaunay, Louis Lamothe and Hippolyte Flandrin. Lamothe, who had been a pupil of Ingres, introduced him to Edgar Degas. The two men became close friends. Another friendship formed at this time was with James McNeill Whistler. Two portraits, including one of Tissot's mother, were among the artist's first exhibits at the Paris Salon in 1859. In 1861 he showed The Meeting of Faust and Marguerite, which was purchased by the state for the Luxembourg Gallery. His first characteristic period made him a painter of the charms of women. Demi-mondaine would be more accurate as a description of the series of studies that he called La Femme à Paris. Tissot fought in the Franco-Prussian War, and, falling under suspicion as a Communard, left Paris for London. Here he studied etching with Sir Seymour Haden, drew caricatures for Vanity Fair, and painted portraits as well as genre subjects. Sometime in the 1870s Tissot met a divorcée, Mrs. Kathleen Newton, who became his muse and the model for many of his paintings.