LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2008 May Signature Fine Arts Auction #5004  / 

33103

James Jacques Tissot (French, 1836-1902) Renee R

Currency:USD Category:Art Start Price:22,000.00 USD Estimated At:25,000.00 - 35,000.00 USD
James Jacques Tissot (French, 1836-1902) Renee R
<B>JAMES JACQUES TISSOT (French, 1836-1902)</B></I><BR><I>Renee Mauperin: Renee and Reverchon Swimming in the Seine</B></I>, circa 1881-82<BR>Oil on paper laid down on canvas [<I>en brunaille</B></I>]<BR>15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.9 cm)<BR>Signed lower right: <I>J. Jacques Tissot</B></I><BR> <BR>PROVENANCE:<BR>Sotheby's, New York, October 24, 1996, lot 373.<BR><BR>LITERATURE:<BR>M. J. Wentworth, <I>James Tissot: Catalogue Raisonne of His Prints</B></I>, Minneapolis, 1978, pp. 256-277 (illustrations to Renee Mauperin).<BR><BR>Tissot produced an etching of this painting (5 5/8 x 3 7/8 in.) that served as the frontispiece to a limited edition printing of the novel <I>Renee Mauperin </B></I>by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The etching derived from the present preliminary study was one of ten original etchings Tissot produced to illustrate the special 1884 edition of the Goncourt brothers' 1875 novel which was published by G. Charpentier et Cie, Paris, in a run of 500 numbered copies.<BR><BR>Tissot's choice to illustrate this particular work by the Goncourts was likely driven by powerful personal circumstances. The Goncourts' story chronicles the inexorable decline and ultimate death of Renee<I> </B></I>Mauperin from tuberculosis, which paralleled the fearful condition of Tissot's greatest, and ultimately most tragic love, his mistress Kathleen Newton, who had been the inspiration for some of the artist's very finest works, including over two dozen of his most accomplished etchings. Their affair was profound and passionate. She had married a surgeon, Isaac Newton, in India in 1871, but having confessed to a continuing liaison with a Captain Palliser, they were divorced the same year. In late 1871, back in England, Kathleen had a daughter, Violet, by Palliser but did not continue the relationship. In 1876, she had a son, George, and it was in the same year that she started to live with Tissot. Whether Tissot was George's father is not known. From 1876, however, she and Tissot shared an intense and deeply loving life together.<BR><BR>Because Newton's past was seen as disreputable by Victorian standards, her life with Tissot had to be hidden from the public eye. In Tissot's large house and garden in north London, they created a private world together. This private world is the atmospheric background to many of Tissot's compositions of this period. <BR><BR>In the autumn of 1882, shortly after Tissot created the present work, Kathleen died of consumption at the age of 28. After her death, a shattered Tissot returned to his native Paris, and after producing his illustrations for <I>Renee Mauperin,</B></I> largely abandoned graphic work entirely, working nearly exclusively on illustrating the Old and New Testaments. On November 15, 1882, Edmond de Goncourt recorded in his journal a visit from Tissot, freshly back from England:<I>'Visite, ce matin, de Tissot arrive dans la nuite d'Angleterre et que me dit, dans le conversation, etre tres affecte de la mort de la Mauperin anglaise, qui, deja  bien souffrante, lui avait servi de modele pour l'illustration de mon livre</B></I>.'<BR><BR>Recent scholarship has revealed that Tissot's etchings for Renee Mauperin, and by extension this surviving painting made prior to the etched frontispiece, were apparently based upon photographs Tissot had taken as compositional "sketches." Although only one photograph survives (collection of Marita Ross, London), it shows Tissot and Kathleen Newton seated on a bench and closely relates to the etching of <I>Renee and her father sitting in the porch of the Church at Morimond </B></I>(Wentworth, cat. no. 70). As Michael Wentworth has noted, the Mauperin etchings as a group possess formal qualities that strongly point to a "photographic origin." Apart from technical issues, the presence of Kathleen Newton in the single extant photograph connected directly with this project documents a tangible, not simply an associative relationship with it.<BR><BR>This work is presented in an ornate gilt Rococo frame. <B>Condition Report:</B> Very good condition.<BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Requires 3rd Party Shipping (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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