Bible Art - Tissot's "Life of Christ"

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James Tissot was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He pursued a career in art from a young age, and came to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, focusing upon the people and women's fashion of the period, but he would eventually explore medieval and biblical subjects.

"Life of Christ" images can be seen as a slideshow by clicking the image at the left, or viewed individually by clicking captions in the list at the right, (below on phones).

While studying in Paris, Tissot made the acquaintance of the American James McNeill Whistler, and French painters Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. Sometime after 1862, he began to shift focus from his early medievalist styles to the creation of narrative paintings of Victorian life and society. Tissot had a wide social sphere that included Oscar Wilde, as well as earlier acquaintances, James Abbott Whistler and Edgar Degas.

In 1874, Degas asked him to join in the first exhibition organized by the artists who became known as the Impressionists. Tissot ultimately refused but would remain a close acquaintance of the group. He traveled to Venice with Édouard Manet and regularly saw Whistler, who influenced Tissot's Thames river scenes.

A strong recurring theme throughout Tissot's middle career was the exploration of social tension between men and women in the context of strictly gender-segregated Victorian society. The last major exhibition of this time in Tissot's life took place in Paris in 1885, with a 15-painting series titled "Fifteen Paintings on the Woman of Paris." These paintings sought to represent different archetypes of women across many different classes and occupations, shown in professional and social scenes.

After completing the Woman of Paris, Tissot experienced a religious vision at the Church of St. Sulpice, leading him to revive his faith and spend the rest of his life making paintings to illustrate the New Testament. In preparation for the work, he made expeditions to the Middle East to record the landscape, architecture, costumes, and customs of the Holy Land and its people. Unlike earlier artists, who had often depicted biblical figures anachronistically, Tissot painted his many figures in costumes he believed to be historically authentic. He departed from the Impressionists' desire to create art that reflected a changing, modern world and returned to traditional, representational styles and narratives in watercolors. First presented in Paris in 1894, the watercolors were received with great enthusiasm, and a highly publicized exhibition later traveled to London and the United States, visiting Manhattan, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. They were eventually bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900.

In 1894, Tissot was awarded the Legion of Honour, France's most prestigious medal. He spent the last years of his life working on paintings of subjects from the Old Testament.