Posted on
Daniel Goddard's Blog
James Jacques Joseph Tissot; Frenchman shunned by his contemporaries, a beautiful
fallen woman and a tragic love story…
The crushing French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Paris Commune
forced Tissot to leave
France
for
London
at the age of 35 in 1871. Here his society paintings were a success with the buying
public and, although a great friend and mentor to Degas, this caused resentment among
his French Impressionist contemporaries who considered his style photogenic and vulgar
- showing the 'shallow British nouveau riche at their worst'.
In 1872, Tissot began exhibiting at the
Royal
Academy
and in 1875 he met a beautiful Irish divorcee and mother called Kathleen Newton, who
he clearly fell deeply in love with and who tragically died at the age of 29 in 1882.
This short and intense period produced paintings dominated by the closeness of family
and domesticity and his enthusiasm and skill as a painter seems to have been invigorated
and energised.
Influences of the Orient and Japan come to the fore alongside an interest in etching
and print-making and this 1875 etching from the major painting tiled Le Chapeau Rubens
[Ruben’s Hat] is a nice example combining the two (FS21/307).
James Jaques Joseph Tissot
Le Chapeau Rubens (FS21/307)
The model does not appear to be his beloved Kathleen who has a rather majestic longer
straighter nose; but Kathleen is often depicted in a Rubens hat too, so maybe it is...
This is a rare etching from an edition of just 50, which bear the artist’s red
monogram and the estimate is £600-£800.
This weblog is produced by
Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.
This article was
originally published
on
Daniel Goddard's Blog
on
Fri, 10 Jan 2014 16:06:14 GMT.
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Author
 | Daniel Goddard BA(Hons) ASFAV
Daniel Goddard is a Director of Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood. He is also Head of the Picture Department. Daniel Goddard was educated at The Kings Grammar School, Ottery St Mary and The Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He was commissioned in 1982 serving in Northern Ireland, The Falklands and Canada and in the 1990s completed an Open University degree in Art History and Humanities. In 1988, he worked in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand and attended The Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. On his return to East Devon, Daniel joined Lawrences in Crewkerne as a saleroom porter and progressed to valuation and rostrum work. In 1996, Daniel joined Bearne's in Torquay to head the Works of Art Department and transferred to Head of the Picture Department in 2000. He continues to run this busy department in the merged firm of Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood. Daniel Goddard has been a director of the firm since 1999 and is an experienced valuer and auctioneer with a good broad range of knowledge and specialist expertise in paintings. He was responsible for the organisation and cataloguing of the two major sales of paintings by Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002), which raised in excess of £3 million.
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