Tissot, James Jacques Joseph

Born:1836 – Nantes, France

Died:1902 – Abbey of Bouillon, Doubs, France

Title of Work: Portico of the National Gallery, London

Born in France, Tissot studied under Louis Lamothe and Hippolyte Flandrin and made his Salon début in 1859. More commonly known as a painter his etching career is firmly associated with his fourteen years resident in London where he emigrated to in 1871 shortly after the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

Following Haden’s founding of the Society of Painter-Etchers on 31 July 1880 Tissot was elected a Fellow – alongside Haden, Heywood Hardy, Hubert von Herkomer, Alphonse Legros and Robert Walker Macbeth. Legend has it that Tissot was tutored in etching by Haden in the late 1850s. His membership of the Society ceased in 1885.

Tissot’s works, although popular, were often denigrated for their reliance on narrative and detail; The influential art critic John Ruskin famously thought Tissot’s paintings “mere coloured photographs of vulgar society”. Fors clavigera: Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain. Orpington, G. Allen, 1896, Letter LXXIX, p.142. However, as a friend of Degas (who painted his portrait ca. 1867–68. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Whistler and Manet, his work also displays an awareness of modern artistic concerns, such as the role of the flâneur, and the psychology of the modern urban environment both of these themes were shared by his Impressionist contemporaries. After the death in 1882 of his mistress and regular model Kathleen Newton Tissot returned to France where he died in 1902.