James Tissot is best known for capturing the elegance of the "Vanity Fair," the luxurious playful activities of London's rich industrialist class as they engaged in leisure activities, often involving stylish dress, proper manners and social etiquette, laced with the mystery of the flirtatious slightly inappropriate interactions between men and women.

This exhibition is laid out chronologically at the museum, showing the transitions in his career. For the purposes of this article, we show his most famous work first, his Vanity Fair period done while in London and his Parisian Le Femme paintings. Each period of his artistic life is headed by a red banner.

In 1872, he purchased a home in the St. John's Wood area of London, at the time an area popular among London's artistic elite. A visit to Tissot's studio was a social event in and of itself. In 1874 French writer and art critic Edmond de Goncourt wrote sarcastically that Tissot "had a studio with a waiting room where, at all times, there is iced champagne at the disposal of visitors." He was admitted as a member of the Arts Club in 1873. He gained popularity among wealthy British industrialists.

In 1874, Edgar Degas invited Tissot to return to France for the first exhibition organized by artists who would later become known as the impressionists, but Tissot did not participate. He was enjoying his life and success in London. He still remained friends with the impressionists though, receiving a visit from Berthe Morisot in London in 1874, and joining Edouard Manet on a visit to Venice.

In 1875 or 1876, he met a beautiful young Irish divorcee, the love of his life. Mrs. Kathleen Newton became Tissot's favorite model, muse, and companion.

From 1776 onward until her death, Kathleen was the model in most of Tissot's paintings. She must have been quite an intriguing young lady. Her father, Charles Frederick Ashburnham Kelly, was an Irish army officer employed by the East India Company in Lahore, India. At the time of the Sepoy Rising of 1858, Kathleen's father was transferred to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.

In 1870, when Kathleen was only 16, her father arranged for her to be married to a surgeon named Isaac Newton. Not to be confused for his namesake, Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Newton was employed with the Indian Civil Service in Agra. This arranged marriage soon ended in divorce at the insistence of her surgeon husband because young Kathleen, while en route to India for their marriage, had been seduced by another suitor and became pregnant. Soon after the wedding, Kathleen informed her husband of the shipboard encounter. In India needing a solution for a difficult situation, the young Mrs. Newton's agreed with her suitor for him to provide money for her trip back to London in exchange for a promise that she would become his mistress back in London. On December 20, 1871, she gave birth to a daughter, Muriel Violet Mary Newton.

The arrangement with her suitor seems to have fallen by the wayside after Kathleen was a young mother. After the birth, Kathleen went to live with her sister who lived in St. John's Wood section of London, an area also inhabited by many artists, including the French painter, James Tissot. In 1876 she gave birth to Cecil George Newton (believed to be Tissot's son). Mrs. Newton moved into Tissot's home later that year 1876 and remained until her untimely death due to tuberculosis, then termed "consumption," six years later at the age of 28.

Tissot and Kathleen Newton did not marry. Both were Catholics, and Kathleen's divorce prevented it. But Tissot was dedicated to Kathleen and his newly found and treasured family life. She was the model and subject of many of Tissot's best paintings. It is believed that as her tuberculosis worsened, she was unable to watch Tissot's grief, and overdosed on laudanum (a bitter tasting opium preparation used to reduce pain) in November, 1882. Tissot sat by her coffin inconsolable for four days.

After Kathleen's death, Tissot left London and returned to home to Paris.

His professional return to the Paris art scene was promoted by Galerie Sedelmeyer with an exhibition entitled Pictures of Parisian Life. The exhibition featured large paintings of the modern Parisian women in both professional and social scenes.

Painters and their Wives ... The day before the opening of the annual Salon in Paris, artists traditionally applied one last coat of varnish to their pictures and then adjourned to a café to celebrate. Tissot shows this gathering on the terrace of the restaurant Ledoyen. This painting includes a portrait of Auguste Rodin with beard and spectacles, but Tissot focuses instead on the stylish women in attendance.

The Young Lady of the Shop ... shows a young woman clerk holding a wrapped package holding an open door, as if we the viewers were expected to take the package and exit the shop. The vertical lines of the door frame accentuate the dimensionality of this painting, making it most striking in person. The man on the street peering inward is interested in the other woman stretching to place an item on a high shelf. The man appears to be attracted more by her posture than by the object in her hands. The Parisian street scene, seen through the glass with passing horses and 19th century fashion adds flavor to this shop scene.

Originally, Tissot envisioned each painting to be associated with a short story from contemporary Parisian writers, but this vision was not realized.

These paintings were similar to his Vanity Fair paintings in London in that they feature exquisitely detailed renditions of modern Parisian fashion, but rather than women of the elite, these were the real women of Paris in professional and social settings. These works show the influence of Japanese prints, making use of unexpected angles and framing. He created prints of this collection to make his compositions available for a wider audience.

Although much is not written of Tissot's family life, he often used his children as models, and painted scenes of a close knit family life. His paintings in his London days with Kathleen Newton show a celebration of their children.

The Little Nimrod shows Kathleen's son Cecil George at the center, with his older sister Muriel Violet Mary lying to the right and Kathleen's two nieces lying underneath the tiger skin. These same children are pictured in Tissot's Hide and Seek pictured earlier in this article.

Tissot loved to give mysterious titles to his paintings, challenging viewers with his compositions.

The forlorn young woman in Melancholy is lost alone in her thoughts, comforted by her small dog seated by her side upon the lower parts of her flowing white dress.

The Convalescent, shows a beautiful girl in a beautiful embroidered robe, collapsed in a chair. The title suggests she is ill, but her rosy complexion and empty gaze forward suggests she's recovering from an emotional loss.

Some of Tissot's work shows the influence of Japonisme. Tissot along with friends James MacNeill Whistler and Edgar Degas amassed significant personal collections of Japanese prints and objects. They were not alone; many of France's artists were drawn to these Japanese artistic ideas. Claude Monet also had a large Japanese collection and Vincent Van Gogh wanted to start an art colony in the South of France with his friend Paul Gauguin inspired by the styles incorporated in Japanese prints

In the late 18th century, paintings of outdoor parties were popular. Tissot painted The Partie Carree in 1870. Many critics attribute Tissot's composition as a nod of respect to Edouard Manet's famous 1863 painting, The Luncheon on the Grass.

Such scenes were appealing to the art buying market because of their sense of romance and the excitement of flirtation.

The sumptuous dresses, low necklines and black chokers were much the fashion rage at the time.

This scene offers a peek into a private, slightly naughty indulgence, two couples engaging in drink and flirtation. Lost in this scene is the small dog, at this point, wondering why he is no longer the center of attention.

Although Tissot first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1859, his breakthrough came in 1864 with two portrait-like paintings, Portrait of Mlle L. L. and portrait of The Two Sisters. These two large paintings were a departure from his earlier entries which featured smaller canvases and paintings with Medieval scenes. It was noted by visitors to the Salon that Tissot possessed a skill of rendering luscious fabrics in detail, something wealthy patrons appreciated in commissioned works.

As a young artist, Tissot attended Jesuit schools in Belgium and France. He moved to Paris when he was 19 years old in 1855. He focused his early career making historical works anchored in moral themes, including a series on the parable of the Prodigal Son done in a medieval setting, and Goethe's tragic play Faust.

His early work shows a young man expressing his affinity for paintings he learned from. These are the kinds of paintings he saw in museums. He was also influenced by a Belgian artist known for his medieval subjects, Henri Leyes whom the young Tissot met in 1859.

Tissot's early career was dedicated to these medieval themes and his work in portraiture. This period ended with the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War and Tissot's self imposed exile in London in 1871.

During the war, Tissot served in the Eclaireurs (Scouts) of the Seine. He was a sharpshooter, but along with his rifle, he carried a sketchbook.

Tissot grew up in the war. His academic Jesuit training and his technical brilliance as a painter were now informed and shaped by Tissot's war experiences.

On Friday, September 9, 1870, a British war correspondent was surveying the scene in Paris of the Garde Mobile squads drilling near Tissot's home. It was Tommy Bowles ... the same Tommy Bowles who founded the magazine Vanity Fair in 1868. Bowles encountered the 24 year old Tissot that evening, in blue uniform and his rifle.

From this meeting, a friendship which served Tissot well as Tommy Bowles, who proved to be a valuable contact in London. Tissot fled Paris in 1871.

After his great success of painting the sumptuous genre scenes of fashionable London ladies in their stylish dresses, and after the great joys and eventual loss and sorrow of his relationship with Kathleen Newton, Tissot returned to Paris. Initially, he began painting the women of Paris, but now older, had a religious experience. He radically changed his artistic career again.

He transitioned his career to focus on Biblical themes. In his younger days, he created a series of works depicting the story of the Prodigal Son in a medieval style. In 1880, he returned to this idea, this time in contemporary France.

Tissot's new artistic course was far different from the course of his friends who continued in impressionism and ventured into post-impressionism. He began painting Biblical scenes of the New Testament in opaque watercolor, also known as gouache. To inform the accuracy of his paintings, he made three trips to the Holy Land in 1886, 1889 and 1896 with sketchbooks in hand.

His New Testament illustrations were shown to critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences in Paris, London and New York. The originals were bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. They were published and the proceeds made Tissot wealthy and famous. He was awarded the Legion d'honneur, France's most prestigious medal.

The last years of his life, he began a series of paintings based on the stories of the Old Testament. He never finished this series, but 80 of these paintings were shown in Paris in 1901, the year before his death, and they were published in 1904.

Tissot died in Doubs, France on August 8, 1902. At that time, he was living in the Chateau de Buillon, a former abbey he inherited from his father in 1888. He is buried there in the Chapel. His Biblical paintings have since become the definitive Bible images and were used in the set design for the blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark, especially the look of the Ark of the Covenant.

Beginning in the mid 20th century, his portraits of fashionable ladies again gained interest in the art market, and auction prices of Tissot's work in London and his Le Femme paintings in Paris began selling for record prices.

James Tissot was an exceptional painter, technically brilliant with a flair for telling visual stories. His genre paintings of late 20th century life in London and Paris are impressive and satisfying when seen up close and in person. Make plans now to visit the San Francisco's Legion of Honor. This exceptional exhibition runs through February 9.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

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