Laguna Fine Art - James Tissot

Title: Sur l'Herbe
Artist: James Tissot
Category: Belle Epoque
Medium: Etching and Drypoint
Framed: Yes
Height: 10 5/8"
Width: 7 3/4"

Original etching and drypoint printed in black ink on laid paper bearing the portion of the Vazn Gelder watermark, a fleur-de-lys in a crowned sheild surmounting the letters “VGZ”. A richly printed impression of Wentworth’s second state and final state, showing many touches of burr, printed after the addtional work added throughout the plate. From an overall edition of approximmately 100 impressions. Signed and dated in the plate lower right J.J.Tissot/1880 (barely visible). In excellent condtion, printed on a sheet with full margins.

Provenance: ex-collection I. Simonet, Paris, bearing his collection stapm (not in Lugt) in violet ink verso.

This etching is a study of Kathleen Newton and the cildren in the garden of Tissot’s house in St. John’s Wood. Richly worked, especially in the completed second state as here, into a wonderful pattern of light and shadow, it illustrates to marvelous effect the atmosphere of a charmed secret life which Tissot wanted to instill into his studies of Kathleen. The sense of an enclosed cut-off world is heightened by the forms of the ponds and the colonnade in the garden, and by the way that sitting on the rug Kathleen looks back behind her at us the viewer. Tissot was a marvelous sensitive etcher who knew to perfection how to use rich textures and complex surfaces in his etching to capture light and atmosphere.

Artist Bio: Tissot was the quintessential celebrity of the era. Jacques-Joseph Tissot was born in 1836 in Nantes. In 1856 he moved to Paris and it was here that he established close ties with both Whistler and Degas. While visiting Antwerp, Tissot fell under the influence of the Belgian academic painter Baron Hendryk Leys, whose style of highly detailed and polished works he mirrored till his death. Tissot refused to classify himself as an Impressionist and declined to exhibit with them, although he was a close friend with both Morisot and Manet. From 1870-1 France waged a bloody war with Prussia. During which Tissot enlisted in the National Guard as a sharpshooter. Afterwards, a civil war broke out pitting the revolutionary Paris Commune that Tissot supported against the right-wing government, which inevitably took power. Tissot thus sought exile in London. He settled in a bohemian suburb of St. John's Wood. His compositions shift to settings of the Thames, the streets and parks, and scenes from in and around his homes and gardens. It was through Tissot's portraits, and a desire to relate them to society, that he came to concentrate on themes of 'modern life.' It is not until he met and fell in love with, a divorced Irishwoman, Kathleen Newton in 1876 that his art took a abrupt turn which coincided with his return to etching. Conscious of the stigma attached to a divorced woman, Tissot ceased to frequent the society he had courted previously. During this time of isolation his works center on domestic scenes that idealize Kathleen and her two children. Kathleen became his model and muse. After Newton's death from consumption in 1882, Tissot returned to Paris. He attempted to recapture the success that he had achieved in London in depicting stylish studies of fashionable society ladies. And in 1883 he began work of the series titled La Femme a Paris. They were intended to be visual equivalents of short stories using psychological drama. But the public preferred the simplicity of his pure Belle Époque studies. From 1886 onwards, Tissot concentrated on religious themes creating a series of illustrations for the Bible. These projects were cut short with his death in Buillon in 1902. Etching was an integral part of Tissot's work. After 1875, he pursued the medium with vigor. This was most likely due to the influence of Whistler's etchings and the encouragement of Seymour Haden, who with Delatre, the printer had a profound influence on Tissot's etching style. Many of Tissot's etchings are derived from his paintings. However he saw etching as a total art form in and of itself. His eye for pose, gesture, rich materials and emotional drama are brought together in a combination of line and ink which makes them amongst striking and absorbing prints of their genre. Tissot was heavily influenced by the opening up of Japan to the West bringing with it Eastern objects of exoticism. Oriental fascination reached a grand scale at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. Tissot was a connoisseur collecting Japanese woodblock prints as well as objects d'art that adorned his home. Tissot's appeal to the Society of the day was the combination of traditional style with utterly modern subject and that remains his appeal. It is his emotionalism beneath the elegant surface that lifts his work into the world of great art.

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