James TISSOT
(1836 Nantes – 1902 Besançon)
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Etching and drypoint printed with surface tone on cream japan paper. Signed and dated in the plate. From the edition of around 100. Framed.
Size of sheet: 37.5 x 27.2 cm.
Wentworth 37(only state); Beraldi XII 130.29.
Provenance: Merrill Chase Gallery (Gallery label).
James Tissot: Le Croquet
In this print—based on a painting of the same title in the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario—Tissot stages a scene of leisurely recreation in his London Garden, identifiable by the distinctive colonnade surrounding the fountain in the background. The game had arrived in England from France in about 1860.
Born in France, Tissot was an anglophile, even changing his birth name Jacques-Joseph to the more English - James. The influx of Japanese prints and the innovation of photography influenced Tissot along with the most avant-garde artists of Paris; but unlike the Impressionists, Tissot insisted on an Academic finish to his works, which found a place in the Salons of Paris and London.
In 1880, Tissot became a charter member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, founded by Seymour Haden for artists who produced their own prints of their paintings, and he began exhibiting his prints regularly in England and Scotland through the end of the decade.