The First Shall Be Last

The First Shall Be Last by James Tissot (1886)

James Tissot’s painting, The First Shall Be Last, completed in 1886, stands as a significant work within the artist’s profound series focusing on the life and teachings of Jesus. Rendered in oil on canvas, this evocative piece not only reveals Tissot’s technical prowess and narrative sensitivity but also reflects complex themes of humility, inversion of social order, and spiritual justice embedded in Christian theology.

The Artist: James Tissot

Jacques Joseph Tissot, known as James Tissot, was a Franco-English painter who rose to prominence in the late 19th century. Born in Nantes, France, in 1836, Tissot studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before achieving success with society portraits and genre scenes in Paris and London. After a period of social and spiritual turmoil, the artist experienced a religious awakening in the 1880s, which redirected his creative energies towards biblical subjects. This resulted in an extensive body of work, including over three hundred watercolors illustrating the New Testament, commissioned for The Life of Christ series.

Historical Context

The First Shall Be Last was painted during a time of immense cultural and intellectual change in Europe. The late 19th century saw challenges to traditional religious beliefs, increased secularization, and new approaches to biblical scholarship. For Tissot, whose faith had been rekindled amid personal adversity, turning to biblical storytelling allowed for an exploration of spirituality through a modern artistic lens. His pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1886 brought authenticity and ethnographical precision to his representations of Jesus’s life, as he sought to visualize Scripture for a contemporary European audience.

Religious and Cultural Significance

The title The First Shall Be Last references a recurring phrase from the Gospels (notably Matthew 19:30, Mark 10:31, and Luke 13:30), a teaching of Jesus highlighting the inversion of worldly expectations in the kingdom of God. The maxim directly challenges conventional notions of status, privilege, and entitlement. In a society where social hierarchies frequently dictated individual worth, this revolutionary spiritual lesson called followers to embrace humility and to measure greatness not by rank or wealth but by service and faith.

Tissot’s painting acts as a meditation on these radical values. By contextualizing the biblical lesson within a vividly realized, historically accurate setting, he prompts viewers to reflect on the broader consequences of Christ’s message for both personal conduct and societal organization.

Symbolism and Iconography

Tissot’s interpretation features Jesus surrounded by his disciples, often depicted in a moment of teaching or parable. The composition typically emphasizes division within the crowd: the rich, the pious, tax collectors, and ordinary people. Through gesture, gaze, and costume, Tissot distinguishes “the first”—the self-assured and socially prominent—from “the last”—the marginalized and overlooked. In many of his religious works, Tissot positions Jesus in gentle opposition to the proud, directing his attention toward those typically ignored by polite society.

The placement and posture of each figure in the painting are laden with meaning. Those representing “the last” might be situated at the periphery or at Jesus’s feet but are often depicted receiving his full attention, a symbolic reversal of their worldly status. The presence of architectural features, local flora, and costume—researched and painted after Tissot’s visit to the Holy Land—lends a sense of place while reinforcing the narrative’s universal spiritual message.

Artistic Techniques

James Tissot was renowned for his meticulous draftsmanship, keen sense of composition, and skillful command of light and color. In The First Shall Be Last, he deploys these techniques to guide the viewer's eye and elucidate the painting’s theme. The oil medium allows for rich pigmentation and subtle gradations of tone, which Tissot employs to create a sense of physical and spiritual depth.

Tissot’s backgrounds are notable for their historical fidelity, featuring accurate architectural details and landscape elements based on his firsthand observations in the Middle East. He frequently used layers of glaze to achieve luminosity and transparency in fabrics and skin tones, lending a lifelike vibrancy to his biblical scenes. Attention to gesture and expression further enhances the work, inviting viewers into the emotional drama of the moment.

The composition is carefully balanced—the figures are arranged to create a rhythm of lines and volumes, echoing both the orderliness and disruption inherent in Jesus’s teaching. Light is often used to spotlight Christ or those to whom he is ministering, visually reinforcing the message that spiritual worth is independent of worldly status.

Cultural Impact

Tissot’s religious paintings were widely exhibited and published, profoundly influencing both devotional art and biblical illustration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The First Shall Be Last and its companion works contributed to renewed interest in the “lives of the saints” genre and inspired other artists to approach sacred history with similar ethnographic and emotional intensity.

The clarity and accessibility of Tissot’s New Testament series made them popular among both lay and clerical audiences, shaping visual perceptions of Jesus’s life for generations. His approach—melding realism with spiritual conviction—set a new standard for religious art in an increasingly secular age, bridging the gap between faith tradition and modernity.

Sources

• Clark, Kenneth. The Life and Work of James Tissot. Thames & Hudson, 1979.
• Ball, Victoria. "James Tissot: Painting the Bible," Apollo Magazine, September 2019.
• Brown, David Alan. James Tissot: The Life of Christ. Brooklyn Museum, 2009.
• "The Bible and Its Influence on Art: James Tissot." Museum of the Bible, www.museumofthebible.org.
• "The First Shall Be Last, 1886," The Brooklyn Museum Collections, www.brooklynmuseum.org.