James Tissot

James Tissot (1836–1902), born Jacques Joseph Tissot in Nantes, was the son of a drapery merchant and a milliner, a background often linked to the fine detail he gave to clothes. In 1856 or 1857 he went to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts under Hippolyte Flandrin and Louis Lamothe, and came to know Degas, Whistler and Manet. After the Franco-Prussian War he moved to London in 1871 and made his name with scenes of fashionable Victorian life, also drawing caricatures for Vanity Fair under the name Coïdé. Following the death of his companion Kathleen Newton in 1882 he returned to Paris, and in 1885 a religious experience at the church of Saint-Sulpice turned him to biblical subjects for the rest of his life. He travelled in the Middle East to study its landscapes, and his 365 gouaches of the life of Christ, shown in Paris, London and New York, were bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. Three works here: The First Shall Be Last, The Magnificat and Visitation.