James Tissot: The Fashionable Beauty
Self-portrait, 1885
James Tissot (1836 -1902) was a painter known on both sides of the Channel as he spent important chunks of his life both in England and in France. Born as Jacques Tissot to a prosperous merchant family in Nantes, Brittany, he decided to pursue an artistic career despite his father’s misgivings. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and, in 1859, aged only twenty-three, he already exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. He began with depicting the Middle Ages but soon moved to the portrayal of fashionable life, where he excelled. Tissot’s name is evocative of pleasing paintings of pleasing people in pleasing situations. In the 1880s he produced a series of paintings called La Femme à Paris. We had already seen one of them—and the story it depicts—in the post Without a Dowry. More of the series paintings follow here.
The Ladies of the Chariots
The Shop Girl
A Woman of Ambition
The Artists’ Wives
The Woman of Fashion
The Bridesmaid
The Circus Lover
Provincial Women
At the Louvre
A lavish three-part Tissot’s biography can be found here.
Related posts:
Without a Dowry: The Business of Marriage
Jean Béraud: The Most Parisian of the Paris Painters
Paris Markets in Victor Gilbert’s Paintings
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Victorian Paris 
Tissot’s brush strokes are absolutely perfect. One wonders what kind of brushes he used to get such feather detail…especially on the Woman of Ambition canvas.
It seems such a pity that contemporary artists can’t seem to achieve such realism. I realize you will scoff at this comparison but such brushwork reminds me of Rockwell paintings, the mastery which allows the beholder to think he can walk right through the painting as if it were a mirror. I am in complete envy.
What after a lifetime’s worth of discipline and dedication the human mind can create!
Seeing those paintings made my day. Thank you, Iva!
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amazing detail in his paintings
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