Jacques Joseph Tissot, better known as James Tissot, was a French painter, illustrator and caricaturist who incorporated elements of realism, early Impressionism and academic art into his work. Born in 1936 he is best known for his paintings of fashionable women and society life in the late 19th century. At the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris he befriended James McNeill Whistler and Edgar Degas. Tissot's career defies categorisation - an astute businessman, he garnered commercial and critical success on both sides of the English Channel while defying traditional conventions. This compact monograph summarises his youth and education, as cartoonist for Vanity Fair, the London years, return to Paris 1882-85, and his Bible illustrations together with recommended literature and museums where his works are now on view. One of the most evocative biblical paintings is Jesus Ministered to by Angels, the white-robed figure laying prone on the ground and dozens of angels' helping hands and guiding lights surrounding him. With his earthy tones, we are invited into the harem with Samson and Delilah, and to see the beautiful, ornately dressed Jephthah's Daughter playing her drum, the mournful line of women and children emerging from the River Nile in the evocative The Sojourn in Egypt, plus society portraits in bright colours and beautiful costumes, Parisian women reading newspapers or taking a stroll, and just a mile from where we sit here at Bibliophile on the River Thames the absolutely superb Trafalgar Tavern at Greenwich, still exactly the same today but without the steamboats on the river. Hundreds of colour images, 216 pages.
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