Tissot, Women and Time

James Tissot. The Convalescent, 1872. Oil on wood, Overall: 37.5 x 45.7 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of R.B.F. Barr, Esq., Q.C., 1966. Photo AGO. 65/28

Exploring the many ways that the French artist James Tissot represented modern women and envisioned their relationship to time during the last decades of the nineteenth century, this exhibition presents two of the AGO’s most beloved Tissot paintings alongside a selection of more than 40 works on paper donated by Allan and Sondra Gotlieb. The contradiction of the period come alive in these works, as the quickness of modernity, exemplified by the newfound speed of travel, fashion and commodity culture, is juxtaposed against the constrained pace of women’s everyday lives, characterized by the wait to find a husband, caregiving, tending to customers or recovering from illness.

Best known for his paintings of fashionable figures, Tissot began his career in Paris. While he turned down Edgar Degas’s invitation to exhibit with the Impressionists, he shared the group’s desire to portray scenes of modern life in an innovative style. He moved to London in 1871 after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, and became a popular painter of Victorian scenes, particularly those showing young women in typically modern moments, before returning to France in 1882.