The genre tradition [of David Wilkie and Thomas Webster] was adapted to Victorian high life by the Scottish painter, William Quiller Orchardson (1835-1910) and the French emigré James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902), who had their graphic counterpart in the Punch illustrator, du Maurier. They were preeminently city artists; but they injected into their depictions of sophisticated urban settings a new psychological realism suggestive of the ambiguous relationships, especially between the sexes, existing within polite society. Although the Goncourts called Tissot an 'ingenious exploiter of English idiocy,' and although Ruskin referred to his paintings as 'mere coloured photographs of vulgar society, he was strongly influenced, notably in his Thames scenes, by Whistler, with whom he was intimate during the 1870s.
Even at its most pictorial, Victorian genre is rarely without some implicit teaching. Hogarth had spoken of his paintings as 'pictur'd morals'; and for his nineteenth-century followers the spectacle of contemporary life was no less freighted with moral significance than the world Hogarth portrayed. — E. D. H. Johnson
Biographical material and criticism
- James Tissot (1836-1902): a brief biography
- French Painter James Tissot's British Clients: Rising Industrialists
- A Tissot Chronology
- On Holiday with James Tissot and Kathleen Newton
Works
Related Material
Bibliography
Johnson, E. D. H. “Victorian Artists and the Urban Milieu.î The Victorian City: Images and Realities. H. J. Dyos and Michael Wolff. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Pp. 449-74.
"Joseph Tissot, Artist." Evening Post, 64.37 (12 August 1902).
Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, ed. James Tissot. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985; Barbican Art Gallery, c. 1984.
Misfeldt, Willard. “James Jacques Joseph Tissot: A Bio-Critical Study.” Ph.D. diss., Washington University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1971.
Misfeldt, Willard E. J.J. Tissot: Prints from the Gotlieb Collection. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1991.
Misfeldt, Willard E. The Albums of James Tissot. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982.
Wentworth, Michael. James Tissot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Wentworth, Michael.†James Tissot: Catalogue Raisonnée of his Prints. London: 1978.
Wood, Christopher. Tissot: The Life and Work of Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1836-1902. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd., 1986.
Last modified 26 January 2017