Fourteen Etchings by J.J.

Tissot
Author(s): Michael Wentworth
Source: The Massachusetts Review , Summer, 1968, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer, 1968), pp.
505-528
Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25087742

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Fourteen Etchings by

J J. Tissot

Introduction & Notes by Michael Wentworth

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 James
Jacques
Tissot
jL.JLi^Ji^J\^f ^'s prints are in many ways the most rewarding
part of his work. Neither a great draughtsman nor a refined colorist,
he was nonetheless an inspired printmaker. Allowing of correction and
change, and unhampered by color, no medium was better suited to his
particular talent. His greatest gifts were the inventive treatment of
pictorial composition, a sophisticated dramatic sense, and the command
of a remarkably subtle iconography; and each is in evidence in his prints.
Tissot's treatment of his subject matter is almost ideally suited to mid
twentieth-century taste. In his pictures there is none of the crude humor
nor the trivial vulgarity that mars so much of the work of his academic
contemporaries in France for us, nor that story-with-a-moral that makes
so much English Victorian painting so tiresome to modern sensibilities.
In every external of finish and technique he is close to both, but his pic
tures do not read in the same manner, for neither situation nor feelings
are ever overly explicit. Despite his wealth of detail and his high finish,
Tissot escapes that overstatement which paralyzes so much academic
painting. He never attempts to wring anything from a situation: he lets
it speak for itself. Entre les Deux mon Coeur Balance (plate 7), for
example, with its audacious composition and the reticent, ambiguous
conflict which exists between the three figures is typical.

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 Tissot's graphic oeuvre is comparatively large. It comprises about
ninety plates, done in the twenty-five years between I860 and 1885. It
is not, however, remarkably experimental, nor does it develop to any
marked degree within the limits of its technique. Tissot used hard-ground
etching, or drypoint, or a combination of the two for the bulk of his
plates, and only at the end of his career as a printmaker did he explore
the possibilities or tonal grounds ? which he used for four large mezzo
tints (see plate 11) ?or show any interest in a combination of etching
media. In only one plate, La Promenade (not catalogued by Beraldi or
Tissot), did he combine not only etching and aquatint, but also color.1
Tissot seems to have been especially attracted by the refined and deli
cate effects possible with drypoint. Most of them are large in scale and
usually justify Beraldi's statement that they are "portees victorieusement
a de tres grandes demensions."2 Matinee de Printemps (plate 1) is a
splendid example, although it might be argued that smaller plates like
Miss N*** (plate 9) present a more felicitous harmony between scale
and what is, after all, a delicate technique.
For many of his etched plates, Tissot used pure hard-ground etching,
as in the Bastien Pradel or the Sylvian Perier (plates 4 and 5 ), but most
often he favored the traditional combination of etching and drypoint,
where drypoint is used to give richness and variety to an etched plate.
Emigrants (plate 6) was worked in this manner.
As in his choice of media, Tissot's working method seems to have
been both traditional and consistent. His typical process is demonstrated
in a series of four trial proofs for Emigrants in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. In the earliest proof of the four, the figure of the woman
has been fully etched, together with the ladder she descends, and the
most important masts have been indicated in outline. In the next three
proofs the figures are more fully modeled with crosshatching and the
background is gradually filled out with the addition of progressively
smaller details. In the last of the four impressions the print is virtually
complete, although the sky is still blank; clouds are added in the pub
lished state. Of course the progression towards the finished print was
more complicated in its stages ? several other trial proofs for Emigrants
are recorded ? but the four in Boston give a clear idea of Tissot's
method. Also, among the various etched trial states there are often
touched proofs where drawing and gray wash indicate the next changes
to be made in the plate itself.
Tissot was concerned with the physical aspects of his etchings. In
this he was undoubtedly influenced by Whistler, who was particularly
unyielding about printmaking as a fine art and was as painstaking in

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the selection of his papers and the printing of his plates as he was to
their aesthetic content. Impressions of Tissot's prints vary in the tone of
their inks, the technique of their printing, and the choice of their papers.
Tissot had a press in his studio and supervised the printing of his plates
himself. When a large edition was printed, he employed the professional
printers Charles Delatre and Frederick Goulding.
Like many of his contemporaries, Tissot experimented with etching
in the early 1860's. There was a revival of interest in those years which
led to the formation of the Societe des Aquafortistes in 1862. The half
dozen plates Tissot etched at this time, somewhat tentative in technique
and cramped in style, are separated by more than a decade from the
main body of his work and form a small, independent oeuvre. None of
them were ever included in the many exhibitions Tissot held of his
prints, not even the 1886 exhibition where the catalogue, prepared by
Tissot himself, was intended to serve as a catalogue raisonne* Perhaps
he considered them unimportant juvenalia, or perhaps no impressions
remained in his possession so many years later, but as a result they are
even less known than his later, catalogued prints. The Louise Co let
is typical.
Tissot appears to have lost interest in printmaking in the next decade,
but in the mid-1870's he began to etch again, perhaps under the in
fluence of Whistler and Seymour Haden. In the first prints he made
there is an open, atmospheric quality, a lightness of touch, and a freedom
of drawing which disappears in his later etchings, as it disappears from
his later works in general, giving way to the airless, overly explicit
quality noted by so many of his critics. The freshness of these early prints
is perhaps explained by the fact that they are less etched reproductions
than a definite, and not unintelligent, attempt to solve the problems
inherent in the medium itself and to use etching as a creative rather than
a duplicating process. The charm and immediacy of a print like Matinee
de Printemps is undeniable.
In the late 1870's, Tissot's prints grow more explicative in quality,
and are turned almost entirely to the reproduction of his paintings. The
subjects for most of his prints at this time are drawn from his life with
his mistress Kathleen Newton (see plates 8 and 9) and her children
in his house in St. John's Wood. Mon fardin a St. John's Wood (plate 2)
and Le Banc de fardin (plate 11) are representative of a whole group
of prints.
When Mrs. Newton died in 1882, Tissot returned to Paris. In the
hope of communicating with her, he developed an interest in spiritualism,
and etched a portrait of his medium William Eglinton in 1885 (plate 12).

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But his major prints from this period are the five etchings made
after pictures from his series La Femme a Paris. LAmbitieuse (plate 10)
with its hard, airless quality and compulsive rendering of detail has
that excess of sincerity which marks primitive painters ? and the in
sane. Soon after, Tissot gave up printmaking and devoted himself
entirely to religion and a huge series of illustrations to the Bible.
The history of Tissot's etchings is the history of the vicissitudes of
taste. Mavonrneen (plate 8) was the most popular of his prints. It
created a veritable furor when it first appeared, was immediately hailed
as a masterpiece, and was eagerly sought by print collectors of the
1870's and 1880's. In his monumental work on the printmakers of
the nineteenth century, Henri Beraldi found it not only Tissot's
"morceau capital de l'oeuvre,"4 but also "incontestablement une des
plus belles productions de l'estampe originale contemporaine."5 Never
theless, by 1900 its fame had come and gone, and Mavourneen sank
quietly into oblivion with the rest of Tissot's work. Writing in 1924,
F. L. Leipnik found Beraldi's opinions "no longer obsolescent, but
quite honestly antiquated,"6 and signalized Mavourneen as "a portrait
in which a large picture hat and boa seem more important than the
person portrayed."7 Opinion today stands somewhere between the two.
Less than a masterpiece, Mavourneen is nonetheless a splendid period
piece.

Notes to the Text

1There are six trial proofs in the City Art Museum of St. Louis.
The original drawing and sixty-seven trial proofs were sold with the contents of
Tissot's studio in the Vente Tissot, Hotel Drouot, Paris, July 9 and 10, 1903,
lots 153 and 153bis. The plate, which can be dated in the 1890's, never seems
to have reached completion.
2Beraldi, p. 125.
3Referred to in this text as "Tissot."
4Beraldi, p. 130.
5Ibid, p. 127.
6F. L. Leipnik, A History of French Etching, London, 1924, p. 132.
7Ibid.

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Notes
The following bibliographical abbreviations have been used in
the text and the notes to the plates:
Beraldi Beraldi, Henri. Les graveurs du XIX6 siecle;
guide de I'amateur d'estampes modernes, Paris, 1892,
vol. XII, James Tissot, pp. 125-134.
Tissot Tissot, J. J. (Introduction by Charles Yriarte)
Eaux-fortes, Man/ere Noire, Pointes Seches, Paris,
1886.

The works reproduced are from the collection of Mr. and Mrs.
H. A. Wentworth, Birmingham, Michigan.

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1. Matinee de Printemps
In Matinee de Printemps Japanese influence is manifest. Tissot's paintings of
the 1860's use the obvious decorative devices of Japanese art ? the kimonos,
porcelains, and fans. By the mid-1870's, however, the influence is deeper. The
lesson of Japanese art is seen in the attenuated shape of the plate ? the shape of
the Japanese "pillar" print ? and in the composition itself: the figure is sil
houetted against a black ground in the manner of eighteenth and nineteenth
century Japanese actor prints.

Drypoint, on modern laid paper

with a watermark of the Strasburg
lily type (a shield containing
a fleur-de-lis surmounted by a
crown), 19% x 10% inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower right: /. /. Tissot I
1875.
Provenance: Mrs. Charlotte Frank,
London.
Reference: Beraldi 7 ; Tissot 7.

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2. Mon Jardin a St. John's Wood
There are few pure landscapes in Tissot's oeuvre. He preferred to use nature in
concomitance with the figure, and even here, although figures are entirely absent,
the colonnade brings human presence immediately to mind. The setting is Tissot's
garden at 17 Grove End Road in St. John's Wood. The colonnade, copied from
one in the Pare Monceau, often appears in his pictures. Among the prints, besides
Mon Jardin a St. John's Wood, it is seen in Querelle d'Amoureux (Beraldi 11;
Tissot 11), Le Croquet (Beraldi 29; Tissot 33), Garden-Party d'Enfants (Beraldi
40; Tissot 46, 47), Sur l'Her be (Beraldi 41, Tissot 48, 49), and En Plein Soleil
(Beraldi 45; Tissot 54).

Etching, on modern laid paper

with a watermark of the Strasburg
lily type, 7% x 41/2 inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower left: 1878/J. J. Tissot.
Tissot's stamp (Lugt 1545)
lower left margin.
Provenance: Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris.
Reference: Beraldi 31 ; Tissot 35.

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3. Querelle d'Amoureux
It is, of course, impossible to identify the figure of the man with any certainty,
although his appearance is similar to that of Tissot himself, and the artist did
include his own portrait in several pictures. The woman may be Kathleen Newton,
or she may be the unidentified woman who appears in two other prints made
before Tissot had met her, Le Chapeau Rubens (Beraldi 2; Tissot 2) and La
Dormeuse (Beraldi 10; Tissot 10).
A painting of the same subject, in the same direction, was sold at the Galerie
Charpentier, Paris, in June, 1956 (whereabouts unknown, photograph in the Witt
Library, London).

Etching, on modern laid paper

with an illegible watermark at
the centre and the date (18)68
at the upper right, 11% x 7%
inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower left: /. /. Tissot/ 1876.
Signed in pencil lower left: /. Tissot.
Tissot's stamp lower left margin.
Provenance: Kennedy Galleries, New \fork.
Reference: Beraldi 11 ; Tissot 11.

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Hit Hr^^^^^^^^^lll^B^^H

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4. Bastien Pradel
(Souvenir du siege de Paris)
5. Sylvian Perier
(Souvenir du siege de Paris)
In the years between 1875 and 1878 Tissot made six etchings which bear the
subtitle "souvenir du siege de Paris." Two are the present portraits, two others are
figure-pieces, Le premier homme tue que j'ai vu (Beraldi 12; Tissot 12, 13) and
Grand-garde (Beraldi 34; Tissot 38), and two are views, Le Foyer de la Comedie
Fran^aise pendant le siege de Paris (Beraldi 20; Tissot 21) and Le Campement
au Pare d'lssy (Beraldi 33 ; Tissot 37).

Etching, on modern laid paper

i without a watermark,
7V2 x 3% inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower right: /. /. Tissot/ 1870.
Inscribed at upper left:
Bastien Pradel de Figaro / du 39.
Signed in pencil lower left: /. Tissot.
Tissot's stamp lower left.
Provenance: The Folio Society, London.
Reference: Beraldi 8 ; Tissot 8.

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 The two portraits are taken from drawings done in 1870 during the siege, and
although etched in 1875, both bear the date of the original drawing rather than
the date of the etching. Some of the drawings done during the siege were used as
illustrations to Thomas Gibson Bowles' The Defense of Paris; Narrated As It
Was Seen (London, 1871): the Sylvian Perier, as The French Linesman, facing
page 150, and Grande-garde, as Out-Post Duty, facing page 236.
Bastien Pradel and Sylvian Perier also appear on the right side of a watercolour,
Les Eclaireurs de la Seine, in the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Etching, on modern laid paper

without a watermark,
IV'I x 3% inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower right: //. Tissot I1870.
Inscribed at upper left:
Sylvian Perier/ 139 de marche.
Provenance: Mrs. Robert Frank, London.
Reference: Beraldi 9 ; Tissot 9.

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6. Emigrants
Emigrants, published in 1880, is one of Tissot's most complicated etchings of the
shipping. The painting, exhibited at the Grovesnor Gallery in 1879, was at one
time in the Montreal Museum of Art. On the art market in the 1940's, it was cut
down, and its present whereabouts is unknown. A sketch for the painting was in
the possession of M. Newman Ltd. in 1955.

Etching, on antique laid book paper

without a watermark,
13% x 61/4 inches.
Signed on the rail at the left:
// Tissot.
Signed in pencil lower left: /. Tissot.
Tissot's stamp lower right margin.
Provenance: Kennedy Galleries, New York.
Reference: Beraldi 36 ; Tissot 40.

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 7. Entre les Deux mon Coeur Balance
Tissot often represents a man with two women in a situation where ambiguous
relationships create a feeling of tension. Among the prints, La Tam/se (Beraldi
13 ; Tissot 14) and La Galerie du "Calcutta" (Souvenir d'un bal a bord) (Beraldi
18; Tissot 19) also treat triangular situations, but Entre les Deux, because of its
title, comes closest to being explicite.
A painting of the same subject, in the same direction, was in the Sir Hugh
Walpole bequest to the Tate Gallery.

Drypoint, on modern laid paper

with a watermark of the Strasburg
lily type, 9% x 13% inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower right: 1877/JJ Tissot.
Provenance: The Folio Society, London.
Reference: Beraldi 23 ; Tissot 26.

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8. Mavourneen
The title refers to the Victorian song Kathleen Mavourneen, an Irish cri de
coeur published in the 1830's, perennially popular, and as nice a compliment to
Tissot's Irish mistress Kathleen Newton as could be devised.
The plate was published in 1876.
A reduced heliogravure was published by the Galerie Georges Petit in the
1880's.

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 ^mmmmmmmmmmmmiiKiku '**:

mW^V^WAmmmmTSffw arfffinr

"V^m^i^t^'^^^^^^^' -;t mil

mm% S3^^Sb#?saHiP5J-
wm&ii/$&- %ms^^^f--- - ^Kt-
V\- ^Lx
lis

Drypoint, trial proof on modern

laid paper with a watermark of
the Strasburg lily type,
14% x 8 inches.
Provenance: possibly part of lot 58
of the Vente Tissot, Hotel Drouot,
Paris, July 9 and 10, 1903 ;
Argosy Book Store, New "Vbrk.
Reference: Beraldi 24; Tissot 27.

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9. Miss N***, ou La Frileuse
This is the first pure portrait etching which Tissot made of Mrs. Newton, although
she appears among the figures in two or three of his early prints. In an interview
with Marita Ross, Mrs. Newton's niece Lilian Hervey remembered how the two
had met: "Not far away in a luxurious studio lived the French painter M. James
Tissot, then at the height of his popularity. He could scarcely help noticing the
pretty Mrs. Newton who tripped by his gate to post letters, or to take the children
out for a walk. One day he called to ask if he could paint her portrait. Over the
sittings they fell deeply in love, and soon Mrs. Newton went to live with Tissot."
(Marita Ross, "The Truth about Tissot," Everybody's Weekly, June 1946, p. 6)
It is not impossible that this print reflects just such a portrait.
In the exhibitions of his prints held during his lifetime, Tissot always
identified this print as Mme. or Mrs. N***. Beraldi appears to be the first to
refer to it as Miss rather Mrs., and to have added the soubriquet, which Tissot
undoubtedly would have approved, "La Frilieuse."

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Drypoint, on antique laid book paper
without a watermark,
10V4 x 6% inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
upper right: // Tissot/ 1876.
Tissot's stamp upper right.
Provenance: Sotheby and Co.,
London, 4 July 1967, lot 108.
Reference: Beraldi 19 ; Tissot 20.

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 10. La Femme a Paris: L'Ambitieuse
La Femme a Paris, a series of at least eighteen large paintings, must have formed
Tissot's principal undertaking between 1883 and 1885, and presumably was
intended to re-establish his reputation in Paris after his return in late 1882 from
ten years in London. His purpose was to record Parisian women of different
social classes, encountered as if by chance at their various occupations and amuse
ments. The series was first exhibited at the Galerie Sedelmeyer in Paris in 1885,
under the title Quinze Tableaux sur La Femme a Paris. With two paintings omitted
and three added, it was shown as Pictures of Parisian Life at the Arthur Tooth
Gallery in London in 1886. Tissot made etchings after the first five pictures in the
series: LAmbitieuse, Ces Dames des Chars (Beraldi 69; Tissot 83), Sans Dot
(Beraldi 70; Tissot 84), La Mysterieuse (Beraldi 71; Tissot 85), and La Plus
Jolie Femme de Paris (Beraldi 72 ; Tissot 86).
L'Ambitieuse was called Political Woman when it was exhibited at Tooth's
and was described in the catalogue as follows: "Another 'crush'?this time in the
world of politics, and with a political (and indeed politic) woman for its central
figure. Her pink dress is a marvel of the dressmaker's art, with its multitude of
tiny flounces, its black girdle, its pink sash, and the colour of her pink ostrich
feather fan has been carefully studied to match. She, too, is a beauty, and she has
made what she believes to be a fair exchange of her beauty against her husband's
position. Is he a Minister? Possibly, or if he is not, he will be so one of these
days, at least if dexterity and management on her part can contrive it."
The painting L'Ambitieuse is in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

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mmM'Jii&s^ilm^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^mi

mHmm^mffimBP^^Immmmmmmmmmml

ImH^mm^EBm^mmmmmflmF^lmflmmmmmmmml
K ^yuVBraH^^H^g^ m^HEfflmmmmmmm

mmmmmmmmlB^^TSmRB^mmmmlmmlmH
---- RmML-M_-HI-^-H

Etching, on modern laid paper

with a watermark of the Strasburg
lily type,
15% x 9li>i6 inches.
Signed in the plate lower left:
/. /. Tissot.
Provenance: Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris.
Reference: Beraldi 68; Tissot 82.

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 11. Le Banc de Jardin
Tissot made four mezzotints between 1883 and 1886. Two are after paintings
begun in England before 1882, Le Banc de Jardin and Le Petit Nemrod (Beraldi
74; Tissot 89, 90), one is related to the series La Femme a Paris. Le Matin
(Beraldi 73; Tissot 87, 88), and one is related to spiritualism, L'Apparition
medanimique (Beraldi 67; Tissot 80, 81). It is not known why Tissot began
to experiment with the difficult mezzotint process, although it is ideally suited to
reproduce the rather waxen quality of his paintings.

Mezzotint, on heavy wove paper,

l6i/2 x 221/& inches.
Signed in the plate lower left:
/. /. Tissot.
Provenance: The Folio Society,
London.
Reference: Beraldi 66, Tissot 77,
avant la lettre.

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 12. William Eglinton, magnetiseur
William Eglinton was one of the most widely known mediums of the late
nineteenth century. He travelled extensively, and practiced not only in England
and continental Europe, but also in North and South America, India, and South
Africa. Tissot met Eglinton in Paris in 1885, and after a successful seance fol
lowed him to London for a prolonged course in spiritualism. On May 20th,
1885, Tissot communicated with his dead mistress Kathleen Newton and soon
after recorded her spirit-form in the mezzotint LApparition medanimique. Out
of gratitude to Eglinton, he undertook the present portrait to serve as frontispiece
to John S. Farmer's biography of the medium 'Twix Two Worlds: A Narrative of
the Life and Work of William Eglinton' (London, 1886).
In the portrait, the box on the table is a double, or book, slate used in seances
to obtain psychographic writing.

Etching, on modern laid Van Gelder

paper, 6]4 x 4 inches.
Signed and dated in the plate
lower left: /./. Tissot/ 1885.
Provenance: Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris.
Not catalogued by Beraldi or Tissot.

f "'' "'^^^^gJ^M^^^^^^^^^^^BBPS^^^^"""'"^

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13. Louise Colet
The woman in the present portrait has been identified by recent research on the
basis of comparison with other known portraits as the poetess Louise Colet (1810
1876). Two other prints, an engraving after a portrait by Winterhalter used as a
frontispiece to Mme. Colet's Chants des Vaincus (Paris, 1846) and a lithograph
by Alophe for the 1843 Galerie de la Presse clearly represent the same person,
although she is some twenty years younger.
Besides the present etching, Tissot made at least two other portraits of Louise
Colet: another uncatalogued etching (repr.: James Tissot, The Museum of Art
of the Rhode Island School of Design and The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1968, no.
60), and a painted portrait which was sold at Sotheby's 14 September 1962,
lot 112 (present whereabouts unknown).

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 i
i

Etching, on light weight oriental paper,

8% x 6i/2 inches.
Signed with Tissot's monogram lower left.
Provenance: The Folio Society, London.
Not catalogued by Beraldi or Tissot.

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14. Ludovic Halevy
Ludovic Halevy, a member of a distinguished French-Jewish family, was the
librettist, with Henri Meilhac, of many of Offenbach's operettas. He was also
the author of La Famille Cardinale and LAbbe Constantin. The occasion of this
somewhat funereal portrait is not known. From the age of the sitter and the style
of the etching, it can be dated about 1885.

Etching, on modern laid paper

with a watermark of the Strasburg
lily type, 2^4 x 2% inches.
Signed with Tissot's monogram
lower left.
Provenance: Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris.
Not catalogued by Beraldi or Tissot.
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DESIGNED BY RICHARD HENDEL

PRINTED BY THE MERIDEN GRAVURE COMPANY FOR

THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW SUMMER 1968

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