January | 2017 | The Hammock

To cite this article: Paquette, Lucy. James Tissot’s Mourners at Auction. The Hammock. https://thehammocknovel.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/james-tissots-mourners-at-auction/. <Date viewed.>

All auction prices listed are for general reader interest only, and are shown in this order: $ (USD)/£ (GBP). All prices listed are Hammer Price (the winning bid amount) unless noted as Premium, indicating that the figure quoted includes the Buyer’s Premium of an additional percentage charged by the auction house, as well as taxes.

The whereabouts of James Tissot’s The Widow (Une Veuve, 1868), exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1869, was for many years unknown by art historians. It was known to the art world only because Tissot had included it in a photograph album of his work; he was one of the first painters to document his entire oeuvre using photography.

A Widow (Une veuve, 1868), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 27 by 19.5 in. (68.5 by 49.5 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The Widow was purchased during World War II at Acquavella, the New York gallery, and was hung in a mansion abroad. In September, 1982, it was discovered, hanging behind a door, by Thilo von Watzdorf (b. 1944), Sotheby’s 19^th century art specialist, who was visiting the owner to see other paintings in her collection.

Scholars enhanced interest in Tissot’s life and work during the 1980s, and dozens of Tissot oils changed hands from 1980-89.

Sotheby’s estimated The Widow would bring $150,000 to $200,000 at auction, breaking the record high for a Tissot of $148,230 set for his Return of the Prodigal Son at Christie’s, London, in 1982.

The Widow was offered in a sale of 19^th century European paintings, drawings and watercolors at Sotheby’s, New York in February, 1983, bringing $ 185,000 USD/£ 121,105 GBP.

In June 1992, The Widow brought $ 277,800 USD/£ 150,000 GBP at a sale of Victorian Pictures & Watercolours at Christie’s, London.

In early 1993, Victorian art expert Christopher Wood (1941 – 2009) commented on the popularity of James Tissot’s oil paintings among Manhattan Society hostesses: “I can think of ten to twenty Tissots within a few blocks of each other in New York.”

In New York in February of that year, Sotheby’s offered three major Tissot paintings, and Christie’s two.

Sans dot (Without Dowry, 1883-85), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 58 by 41 in. (147.32 by 104.14 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The three paintings at Sotheby’s, from Tissot’s series of fifteen large-scale pictures called La Femme à Paris (The Parisian Woman) painted between 1883 and 1885, included Sans Dot (Without Dowry), which sold for $ 800,000/£ 553,824.

Orphans (L’Orpheline, 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 85 by 43 in. (216 by 109.2 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

The next day, at Christie’s sale of 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors, Tissot’s L’Orpheline (Orphans, 1879), featuring Tissot’s mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854 – 1882). L’Orpheline was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Expected to bring $ 600,000- 800,000/£ 400,000- 530,000), the painting set a new record for a Tissot oil when sold for $ 2,700,000/£ 1,867,865 to art dealer David Mason, with MacConnal-Mason, a fourth generation gallery in St. James established in 1893. Mason was acting on behalf of musical composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948), who in the next decade would collect some of Tissot’s best work – at very high prices.

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The Widower (Le veuf, c. 1877), by James Tissot. Oil on panel. 14 by 9 in. (35.56 by 22.86 cm) Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Still, there were some bargains to be found: Lloyd Webber purchased The Widower (c. 1887), a smaller replica of the original which Tissot exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, at Sotheby’s, London in 1994 for $ 122,587/£ 75,000.

The Rivals (1878 – 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 36.22 by 26.77 in. (92 by 68 cm). Private collection.

In October, 2014, Tissot’s The Rivals (I rivali, 1878–79) was sold at Casa d’Aste Pandolfini, Florence, Italy. Set in Tissot’s conservatory, it depicts Kathleen Newton cast as a young widow, crocheting while taking tea with two suitors, one middle-aged and one old. Tissot exhibited it with a number of other works at London’s Grosvenor Gallery in 1879, and that same year, it was shown at the Royal Manchester Institution’s Exhibition of Modern Paintings and Sculpture, priced at £400. It was purchased by John Polson, of Tranent and Thornly [who also owned Tissot’s A Portrait (1876, Tate, London)], and sold by his executors at Christie’s, London in 1911. It then belonged to Sir Edward James Harland (1831–1895), head of the Belfast shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff and sometime M.P. for North Belfast, of Glenfarne Hall, near Enniskillen, Ireland and Baroda House in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, where it was sold by his executors at Christie’s upon his widow’s death in 1912. Since 1913, The Rivals has been in private collections in Milan, beginning with the Ingegnoli Collection. It was sold by Paul Ingegnoli’s executors at Galleria Pesaro in 1933 and purchased by a Milanese private collector. It was displayed in public again only in Milan, at the Palazzo della Permanente, La Mostra Nazionale di Pittura, “L’Arte e il Convito,” in 1957. At the October 2014 sale, The Rivals was purchased for € 954,600 EUR (Premium) [$ 1,215,969/£ 753,715]. The Rivals, in pristine condition, was displayed at the Stair Sainty Gallery booth at TEFAF, the world’s leading art fair, in Maastricht, Netherlands, March 13-22, 2015.

Celebrities & Millionaires Vie for Tissot’s Paintings in the 1990s

James Tissot in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

Tissot’s La Femme à Paris series

James Tissot in Mourning

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CH377762 If you do not have a Kindle e-reader, you may download free Kindle reading apps for PCs, Smartphones, tablets, and the Kindle Cloud Reader to read The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot. Read reviews.

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

To cite this article: Paquette, Lucy. “James Tissot in Mourning.” The Hammock. https://thehammocknovel.wordpress.com/2017/01/20/james-tissot-in-mourning/. <Date viewed.>

An aspect of the fashionable clothing of his day that James Tissot did not fail to capture in paint was mourning. Several of his pictures show mourning attire of the 1860s to the 1880s in great detail.

The five daughters of Queen Victoria in mourning for Prince Albert. March 1862. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

Wearing appropriate mourning attire was one of the many rituals surrounding death in Tissot’s era, particularly in Great Britain when Queen Victoria wore mourning for forty years following the death of her consort, Prince Albert.

Numerous etiquette manuals and popular journals laid out the strict and complicated etiquette of dress that demonstrated respect for the deceased, earned sympathy for the grieving, and often displayed wealth and social status. Different rules applied depending on the bereaved person’s relationship to the deceased person, from grandparents to cousins to servants.

The most stringent, and the most codified, rules governed the attire of widows. As sexually experienced women who were now single, it was crucial that they observe all proprieties. (1)

Advertising for Victorian mourning garb

Large wardrobes were necessary to outfit women for bereavements of up to two and a half years, and this was a lucrative niche for those in the trade, such as Jay’s of Regent Street, opened in 1841 as an establishment for mourning. (2) Peter Robertson founded a mourning warehouse in Regent Street in 1865, maintaining a wide inventory, executing special orders in a day, and even traveling to the countryside for fittings at no extra charge. In 1876, the firm introduced a style catalog from which customers could order ready-to-wear garments to be sent by mail-order. (3)

A widow’s first, or deepest mourning, was worn for a year and a day. Custom dictated every detail of clothing, and types of fabric to be worn, during this and the following period. For example, the bonnet for first mourning must have a veil hanging at the back, and a shorter veil worn over the face, and cambric handkerchiefs must have black borders. Second mourning was worn for twelve months, with complex instructions as to the gradual introduction of additional freedoms, such as wearing hats again. At the end of the second year, mourning could be put off entirely, but it was considered in better taste to wear half mourning for at least six months longer. (4)

A Widow (Une veuve, 1868), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 27 by 19.5 in. (68.5 by 49.5 cm). (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

In 1869, James Tissot exhibited A Widow (Une veuve, 1868) at the Salon in Paris. The low-cut, square neckline of this stylish young widow’s full-skirted black gown is filled in with a blouse of filmy black silk, trimmed at the round neckline, center front, shoulders and wrists with frothy ruffles in the same fabric. The set-in sleeves and long and full. The trained skirt’s high waist is tied with a wide sash and accented with a black rosette. The pleated flounce at the hem reveals her white, lace-edged petticoat, a black silk stocking, and a squared-toed high heel with its silk bow. Her brown hair is parted in the center, and braids behind each ear crown her head. Wearing black lace mitts as she dreamily pursues her sewing – while showing that glimpse of ankle so tantalizing to Victorian men – it is likely she can be induced to leave off her last months of mourning. The elderly chaperone is in mourning, while the little girl is not.

limperatrice_eugenie_et_son_fils_-_1878_-_james_tissot

The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 50 by 60 in. (106.6 by 152.4 cm). Musee Nationale du Chateau de Compiegne, France. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Empress Eugénie in mourning for her son, 1880. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

Tissot’s double portrait The Empress Eugénie and the Prince Impérial in the Grounds at Camden Place, Chislehurst (c. 1874) depicts the exiled French Empress (1826 – 1920), living outside London after the collapse of the Second Empire, and her son, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who would be killed in 1879, at age 23, in the Zulu War. The only child of Napoléon III of France, he was accepted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1872 and is pictured in the uniform of a Woolwich cadet. The Empress is in her first year of mourning following the death of her husband in January, 1873.

Her black gown consists of a high-necked, button-up bodice with long, tight-fitting, set-in sleeves over a white blouse, and a straight, trained skirt with a black draped tablier (apron) overskirt. Her round black cap, so like her son’s, is trimmed in white, and a long black veil trails from its back.

The Widower (Le veuf, 1876), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 116.3 by 75.5 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot exhibited The Widower (1876) at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. He portrays this widower with a lumpy, crushed hat of soft felt, wearing a sack coat. The bereaved man appears so much sadder than if he were dressed in a dapper frock coat and top hat.

Orphans (L’Orpheline, 1879), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 85 by 43 in. (216 by 109.2 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Orphans (L’Orpheline, 1879), features Tissot’s mistress and muse, Kathleen Newton (1854 – 1882) and was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Mrs. Newton’s form-fitting mourning gown was the very latest style – the new cuirasse bodice and Princess line seaming created by couturier Charles Worth. Fitted over a white blouse with lace showing at the wrists under the long, slim, set-in sleeves, it is a different style of gown altogether from previous Victorian dresses. It has no waist seam: the seams run continuously from the shoulder to the hem, and the shape is created by sewing long, fitted fabric pieces together. Note the center front of her gown, a vertical section of pleated bands. The Princess seam created a tall, slender look. It depended on the curaisse bodice, a tightly-laced, boned corset that encased the torso, waist, hips and thighs. The result was a dramatic narrowing of the silhouette of women’s fashion in the late 1870s.

Mrs. Newton wears black lace mitts, a peaked bonnet embellished with black feathers, and a heavy black scarf around her neck. She wears a corsage of lavender and white chrysanthemums, but no jewelry except for the wedding band visible on the third finger of her left hand. It is likely that she is being represented as a widow in her secondary mourning, as lavender was considered a color appropriate for that stage.

The little girl [modeled by Kathleen Newton’s niece, Lilian Hervey (1875 – 1952)] also wears mourning – though, oddly, she seems dressed for different weather entirely in her short-sleeved, button-down black dress over a white chemise. She has bare arms and legs and wears white socks with black strapped shoes.

The Rivals (I rivali, 1878-79), by James Tissot. Private Collection.

Tissot’s The Rivals (I rivali, 1878–79) is set in the conservatory of his home at 17 (now 44), Grove End Road in St. John’s Wood, London. It casts his mistress, young divorcée Kathleen Newton, as a young widow, crocheting while taking tea with two suitors, one middle-aged and one old. Mrs. Newton is wearing the same black gown she did in L’Orpheline (Orphans, 1879). In this picture, Tissot paints her so close to the end of her mourning that she is entertaining men – and so nonchalant about it that she slouches in her fur-lined, wicker armchair while focusing on her needlework!

Tissot exhibited this painting at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Kathleen Newton died of tuberculosis on November 9, 1882, at age 28, at Tissot’s house with her sister, Polly Hervey, at her side (according to the death register). Tissot draped the coffin in purple velvet and prayed beside it for hours. Immediately after the funeral on November 14, at the Church of Our Lady in Lisson Grove, St. John’s Wood, Tissot abandoned his home and returned to Paris.

Sans dot (Without Dowry, 1883-85), by James Tissot. Oil on canvas, 58 by 41 in. (147.32 by 104.14 cm). Private Collection. (Photo: Wikimedia.org)

Tissot exerted himself to re-establish his reputation in Paris, which he had fled following the bloody aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, with a series of fifteen large-scale pictures called La Femme à Paris (The Parisian Woman). Painted between 1883 and 1885, they portrayed the fashionable parisienne in various incarnations using brighter, modern colors than he had in his previous work.

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Women’s mourning bonnet in hard crape, c. 1880. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

The elegant young widow in Sans dot (Without Dowry, 1883-85) takes the air in the gardens in Versailles wearing a buttoned-up, high-necked black bodice with three-quarter, eighteenth-century-style Sabot sleeves that fit tightly before flaring into a deep ruffle below the elbow. Black gloves cover her hands and forearms. She wears a black draped tablier (apron) overskirt over a straight, pleated underskirt in sable-colored silk. Her high-crowned, black straw bonnet features a large black bow over her fringe, echoed by a soft bow tied neatly under her chin. Because her bonnet is so elaborately beribboned and has no veil, we know she is past her first year of mourning (when the appropriate bonnet was simple, like the one shown at the right) and is now in secondary mourning. The widow maintains a wistful expression and a demure posture before her work basket and a book while her elderly chaperone, who is wearing mourning and a bonnet with a veil, is absorbed in the newspaper. She appears completely aware of her charms – and of the fact that her lack of a dowry seems unlikely to affect her ability to attract another husband.

James Tissot’s garden idyll & Kathleen Newton’s death

A visit to James Tissot’s house & Kathleen Newton’s grave

Tissot’s La Femme à Paris series

REFERENCE WORKS:

(1) Sidell, Misty White, “A time when the wrong outfit could lead to disgrace and scandal: New Costume Institute exhibit to explore the strict world of Victorian mourning fashions,” Daily Mail, (July 1, 2014); http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2677118/A-time-wrong-outfit-lead-disgrace-scandal-New-Costume-Institute-exhibit-explore-strict-world-Victorian-mourning-fashions.html (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

(2) “Victorian Mourning Etiquette,” http://www.tchevalier.com/fallingangels/bckgrnd/mourning/ (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

(3) Hansen, Viveka, “Jet & Dressed in Black – the Victorian Period (B 20),” TEXTILIS (October 12, 2016); https://textilis.net/ (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

(4) Robinson, Nugent. Collier’s Cyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information. New York: F. Collier, 1882. (Accessed: 1/19/2017)

The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot, brings Tissot’s world from 1870 to 1879 alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.

Illustrated with 17 stunning, high-resolution fine art images in full color

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

(295 pages; ISBN (ePub): 978-0-615-68267-9). See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009P5RYVE.

NOTE: If you do not have a Kindle e-reader, you may download free Kindle reading apps for PCs, Smartphones, tablets, and the Kindle Cloud Reader to read The Hammock: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot. Read reviews.