James Tissot: an Artist with an eye for detail.

 In my spare time, I study art history. I consider this an interesting hobby as it helps me to escape from everyday monotony and get into a different world. Of all artists, I like James Tissot most. Tissot was a French artist who painted during the second half of nineteenth century. He was a painter of modern society with a sharp eye to observe everyday life in vivid details. For example, the following work titled “The Captain’s Daughter” depicts the captain engaging in a deep conversation with the other sailor while his daughter is sadly looking outwards. The placement of the telescope on the table in front of the captain and the binocular on his daughter’s hand does allude us to think deeper about the story that’s being told through this painting.

 

Figure 1: James Tissot - The Captain's Daughter, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons: 

One of Tissot’s favorite scenes to focus on was a ball where gorgeously dressed fashionable women were present sometimes welcoming guests, sometimes accompanied by their lovers and sometimes just themselves having a quiet time. Tissot used to paint those scenes with intricate details of the dresses. The following painting is one such example adorned by gorgeous dresses: 

Figure 2: Les Demoiselles de Province, by James Tissot, photo by Flicker user Jean-Pierre Dalbera, used under creative common Attribution 2.0 license

Tissot was not only a great storyteller of everyday scenes but also his sense of details, use of colour, reflection of light and shadows in materials like tea pot, carpets and in particularly the costumes worn by fashionable women were so vivid that you can feel the materials and the textures. In fact, Tissot’s painting captured the changing fashion trends of 1860s and 1870 much better than anyone else (Lucy, 2016). The following comment has been made about Tissot’s painting titled “Evening” (also known as Evening as shown in Figure 3) in a fashion history timeline article  (Brackman, 2000) published by New York State University:

“In Evening, the woman in yellow is wearing a gown that draws the eye all around, especially when compared to those in the background. Her gown is made of layers and layers of pleated, multi-coloured flounces that seem to gather into the center at the back of her legs” (Brackman, 2020) (This quote is from Fashion History Timeline article by Heather Brackman licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). 

       Figure 3: James Tissot - The Ball,  marked as public domain, more details on  Wikimedia Commons: 

To summarize Tissot’s portray of fashion, beauty and modernity the following remark by       Marshall and Warner (1999) is quite appropriate “at the heart of James Tissot’s work as an   artist lies the idea of the modern, the appearance and character of the present as they distinguish it from  the past” (p. 9)

A Short Reflection:

This is a very interesting exercise. I had to find images and text having different kind of creative common licensing and then incorporating these with my post. Finally, I had to choose a Licensing for the entire post. I am selecting Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 International License  except for the public domain images. It can be noted that even though Figure 2 is a photo of public domain  painting and the photographer has applied his own attribution of CC-BY-2.0. To make a decision to choose this licensing mode, I have used the Queen’s university Library guide authored by Magno (n.d)  on Creative Common Licensing to learn more about different creative common licensing and attribution styles.  I have used two public domain licenses, one CC-BY and one BY-NC-SA, so by choosing CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 for the post I could cover all the common denominator of the licenses. Since I did not put my blogpost as a public domain, I own the copyright of this post but I allow others to use it as long as it is used in non-commercially, shared alike with my attribution.

References:

Brackman, H (2020) 1878 – James Tissot, Evening | Fashion History Timeline. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1878-james-tissot-evening/

Paquette, Lucy ( 2016).  James Tissot’s Fashion Plates (1864-1878): A Guest Post by Lucy Paquette. Retrieved February 27, 2021, from https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/10/10/james-tissots-fashion-plates-1864-1878-a-guest-post-by-lucy-paquette/

Magno, V. (n.d.). Library Home: OER Background: Creative Commons (CC) - Licensing and OER: Mixing Licenses. Retrieved March 1, 2021, from https://library.fvtc.edu/CreativeCommons/Mixing

Marshall, N. R., & Warner, M (1999). James Tissot: Victorian life, modern love. American Federation of Arts.

 

 

 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.