Explore “James Tissot: Fashion & Faith,” the first exhibition on the U.S. West Coast dedicated to the remarkable life and oeuvre of the enigmatic artist. It presents new scholarship on the painter’s technique and practice, lending rich insight into the vibrant cultures of 19th-century Paris and London, including the artist’s interest in Spiritualism and biblical illustrations.

Greeting visitors, the life-size painting “October,” on loan from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, presents Kathleen Newton, a young divorcée who became the artist’s companion, frequent model, and greatest love. In one of Tissot’s largest and most finely detailed paintings, Newton is caught in motion with a swish of frothy pleats and petticoats, inviting us to follow her into the picture.

After the tragic early death of Kathleen Newton, the artist returned to Paris, embarking on an ambitious series of large-scale “pictures of Parisian life,” each depicting an archetype of the modern Parisian woman. The composition of “Painters and their Wives” (shown at top), from the Chrysler Museum of Art’s collection, includes the wives of artists gathered to celebrate the annual varnishing day before the opening of the Salon exhibition, where artists might make or break their careers.

A highlight of the gallery focusing on Tissot’s success as a portrait painter is “The Portrait of Mlle L. L.” On loan from the Musée d’Orsay, the life-size painting, which gained Tissot recognition at the Paris Salon, features a sophisticated young woman in an elegant interior. Important clues around Tissot’s interest during his first Paris period emerge, such as his ability to meticulously render fashion trends of the day, as well as his layering of complex compositional elements, seen in the woman’s inscrutable expression. Moreover, the cropping of objects in the room (such as the mirror, chair, and curtains) suggests a response to the new medium of photography.

Tissot’s iconic works turn a perceptive, often humorous eye on the social mores around him, his fascination with modern life apparent in works such as “The Ball on Shipboard.” Although he spent a decade of his life in London, Tissot never gave up his French citizenship. Many of his London-period paintings suggest that he is keenly aware of his role as a cultural outsider capturing important social events.

For more information about “James Tissot: Fashion & Faith,” please visit https://legionofhonor.famsf.org/.

Sign up to receive Fine Art Today, the free weekly e-newsletter from
Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.

Édouard Manet (1832–1883) is best known today for provocative large-scale paintings that challenged the old masters and academic tradition and sent shockwaves through the French art world in the early 1860s. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, he shifted his focus and produced a different, though no less radical, body of work: stylish portraits, luscious still lifes, delicate pastels, intimate watercolors, and freely brushed scenes of suburban gardens and Parisian cafes.

On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum through January 12, 2020, “Manet and Modern Beauty” explores for the first time in a major museum exhibition the artist’s last years, after his rise to notoriety in the 1860s and the formal launch of the Impressionist movement in the early 1870s. The exhibition will feature more than 90 works of art, including an impressive array of genre scenes, still lifes, pastels, and portraits of favorite actresses and models, bourgeois women of his acquaintance, his wife, and his male friends.

“Manet is a titan of modern art, but most art historical narratives about his achievement focus on his early and mid-career work,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Many of his later paintings are of extraordinary beauty, executed at the height of his artistic prowess—despite the fact that he was already afflicted with the illness that would lead to his early death. These works sparkle with an insistent — perhaps even defiant — sense of life. Presenting many iconic paintings, including our recently acquired “Jeanne (Spring),” alongside pastels and intimate watercolors, “Manet and Modern Beauty” takes a fresh look at this justly renowned and ever-popular artist.”

Manet died at the age of 51 in 1883, after a long and painful illness. Declining health forced him to adjust his working habits: During the last six or seven years of his life, his output was generally more intimate in both scale and subject, focusing on fashionable scenes of Parisian life and the stylish women, and sometimes men, of his acquaintance. Too often dismissed as superficial by critics, these later works provide valuable testimony to Manet’s elegant social circle and suggest a radical new alignment of modern art with fashionable femininity while recording the artist’s unapologetic embrace of beauty and visual pleasure in the face of death.

“Manet and Modern Beauty” is divided into five sections—“La Vie Moderne,” “Portraits of an Era,” “The Four Seasons Project,” “Manet at Bellevue,” and “Flowers, Fruits, and Gardens.”
“Manet and Modern Beauty” is on view at The Getty through January 12, 2020. For more information, please visit getty.edu.

Sign up to receive Fine Art Today, the free weekly e-newsletter from
Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.