Artist Profile: Jacques Joseph Tissot
I first came across Jacques-Joseph Tissot when in high school looking through some library books.
I was immediately taken to this dreamy fairytale-like version of Paris & London in the 19th century.
Tissot is famed for creating a narrative in his paintings (he was also an illustrator) of fashionably dressed men and women in society.
The costumes the women wear are often extravagant, almost over-the-top, with silhouettes accentuated in the style of the times.
Jacques-Joseph Tissot was born in 1836, in Nantes in a seaport on the French coast. He travelled to Paris to study at Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he met and became friends with James McNiell Whistler and Edgar Degas.
One of the women who appears in many of his paintings Mrs. Kathleen Newton, became his companion and moved into Tissot's household in 1876. This was looked down upon at the time as she was but his mistress to their neighbours in St John’s Wood, London.
She was the love of his life, his muse, his everything. Tissot chose to become a hermit as he was forced to decide between a social life or her. She lived with him until her unfortunate suicide in the late stages of consumption in 1882 at the age of 28.
Jacques-Joseph Tissot
Born: 15 October 1836, Nantes, France
Died: 8 August 1902, Chenecey-Buillon, France
Style: Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Romanticism
Education: Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Edgar Degas - Portrait of James Tissot, c. 1867
