James Tissot: Victorian Life / Modern Love
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
September 22 - November 28, 1999
Musée du Québec, Québec
December 16, 1999 - March 12, 2000
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
March 25 - July 2, 2000
James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love is the first major US retrospective in 30 years of the French artist James Tissot (1836-1902). Comprising approximately 40 paintings, 37 prints, and 20 watercolors and gouaches on loan from collections from around the world, the exhibition constitutes the most complete representation of James Tissot’s work in this country and celebrates his notable return to both popular and scholarly favor in recent years. The exhibition is organized by The American Federation of Arts and the Yale Center for British Art.
Guest curator Malcolm Warner, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art, has arranged the exhibition into six thematic sections: Historical Subjects, Modern Life in France, Modern Life in Britain, Prints, La Femme à Paris, and Biblical Illustrations.
James Tissot gives prominence to the wry and urbane scenes of Victorian life for which the artist is best known. The exhibition presents a selection of James Tissot’s finest works with particular emphasis on his years in London, where he lived from 1871 to 1882. The paintings showcase his keen observations of the manners and fashions of his times. With remarkable technical virtuosity, he gently mocked what he admired, reveling in recording the minute details of contemporary finery.
In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Mr. Warner writes, "At the heart of James Tissot’s work as an artist lies the idea of the modern, that which makes the present time distinct in appearance and character from the past." In this setting, he portrayed the nuances of modern love: the drama of attraction, flirtation, passion, and loss, and the gestures through which they were expressed in Paris and London society.
James Tissot left London and returned to France in 1882, following the death of his beloved companion and favorite model, Kathleen Newton. Between 1883 and 1885, he created a series of fifteen large paintings titled La Femme à Paris. Like the canvases he created in London, these paintings hint at amorous intrigue while depicting scenes from the lives of Parisian women.
In 1886, still mourning the death of Mrs. Newton, Tissot experienced a vision of Christ and, consequently, a deepening of his religious ardor. From this turning point until his death, Tissot devoted himself to creating hundreds of works in a variety of mediums illustrating biblical stories. With their combination of mysticism and realism, these works struck a powerful chord with the public and were immensely popular in both exhibitions and in book form in Europe and North America.
While Tissot is not the kind of artist who features largely in general histories of art, his work is admired, studied, and collected all over the world, sometimes with cult-like devotion. According to Mr. Warner, the exhibition is designed to "present Tissot on his own terms, to bring out the intelligence, the inventiveness, and the humor that make him such a highly enjoyable artist."
Victorian Life/Modern Love
Published by the Yale Center for British Art
and The American Federation of Arts
PUBLICATION - A fully illustrated catalogue, written by Malcolm Warner and Tissot scholar Nancy Rose Marshall accompanies the exhibition. James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love is published by the Yale Center for British Art and The American Federation of Arts in association with Yale University Press, London. 208 pages, 9 x 10", 96 color and 31 black-and-white illustrations.
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS
41 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10021
