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1836 - 1902 • French/English • Painter • Academic Realist
"... this year M. Tissot left the Middle Ages to enter our century." - Theophile Gautier, 1864
Gautier's barbed remark, quoted above, alludes to the switch Tissot had just made from HISTORYP AINTINGS inspired by RENAISSANCE artists to pictures of fashionable people in modern life. It was the occasion of the SALON of 1864, and one of the two Tissot paintings in the exhibit was Portrait de Mlle L. L. (Young Woman in a Red Jacket; 1864), which may show some influence of Tissot's friend INGRES. He was also a friend of DEGAS, who painted Tissot's portrait in 1867-68. Because of his involvement in the politics of the Revolutionary Commune of 1871, Tissot moved to London and lived there for about a decade. As did DALOU, Tissot had great success with commissions from the upper class. His flattery, highgloss finish, and tightly painted detail, especially on their elegant clothing, greatly pleased his clients. If Gautier was sardonic, GONCOURT was downright nasty writing about Tissot's 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." Tissot returned to Paris after the death of his mistress and model, and began illustrating first the life of Jesus, then scenes from the Hebrew Bible. He made two trips to Palestine and the Near East in an effort to achieve accurate representations. Drawings from his trip were published with great success. The veracity of his paintings became a rich resource for 20th-century filmmakers, including D. W. Griffith and Steven Spielberg.
