British and Irish Art Articles

By Tamsin Evernden

James (Jacques) Joseph Tissot (1836-1902)
Preparing for the Gala
signed 'J.J.Tissot' (lower left)
oil on canvas
34 x 16½ in. (86.4 x 41.9 cm.)
Sold for £1,688,000
London, June 2006

The June 2006 sale of Victorian & Traditionalist Pictures includes a major work by the French-born artist James Jacques Joseph Tissot. Preparing for the Gala is innovative in a number of ways. One of the first pictures to be set in the garden of Tissot's St John's Wood house at 17 (now 44) Grove End Road, it incorporates the newly installed colonnade that appears in many of his subsequent garden subjects.

The picture is contemporary with Still on Top, 1874 (Auckland City Art Gallery), which reproduces the composition on a more conventional canvas format and relocates the group in front of a pergola.

Preparing for the Gala is most interesting when judged in a European context; specifically in relation to the burgeoning force of French Impressionism. Although Tissot left Paris for London in June 1871, he maintained regular contact with contemporaries such as Degas and Manet.

Tissot had fought on the front line defending the city during the Prussian siege of winter 1870-71, and remained in Paris during the Commune and incipient civil war. But the ensuing chaos wasn't conducive to an artist seeking commissions, and Tissot recognised a ready market in England.

Degas acknowledged his perspicacity, writing in September 1871: 'They tell me you are earning a lot of money… Give me some ideas of how I might also get some advantage from England… Say hello to Whistler and Legros'.

By the time Tissot painted Preparing for the Gala, he and Degas had known one another for some twenty years. They shared, with their friend Manet, a passion for Japanese prints and photography. The bold zig-zag of flowerbeds, path and pond-rim that draws the eye into Preparing for the Gala is echoed in work by both Degas and Manet. The sense of arrested movement pays tribute to photography; the unusual vertical format recalls Japanese pillar prints.

The flags testify to the modernity of Tissot's vision. As a visual device their ability to inject a composition with vitality and drama was recognised by Monet, who introduced flags into seaside views such as Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1877 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and Sisley, whose Regatta at Molesey, 1874 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), is contemporary with Preparing for the Gala.

Flags also feature in Tissot's Royal Academy exhibit of 1874, The Ball on Shipboard (Tate Britain), which portrays a warship bedecked en fête for Cowes. Ships carried the ensigns of all nations so they could fly a 'courtesy flag' when entering a foreign port.

Tissot kept his own stock-they appear in photographs of his final residence, the Château de Buillon at Besancon. The flags in Preparing for the Gala also bring to mind a more significant precedent: Delacroix's Liberty leading the people: 28 June 1830 (Louvre, Paris).

The pose of Tissot's standing figure echoes (in reverse) that of Liberty. Together with the bonnet rouge of his kneeling gardener, this could constitute an ironic or patriotic allusion that was subtle enough to rebut controversy.

Degas had urged Tissot, in March 1874, to take part in the seminal Paris show that introduced the Impressionists as a cohesive group, united by their freer style and 'modern life' subject-matter. He declined. His London career was flourishing, and the changes he implemented at 17 Grove End Road were testament to commercial success.

In 1874, however, Tissot was to both entertain Parisian friends Berthe Morisot and Edmond de Goncourt and execute-in Preparing for the Gala-a work that showed his affinity with the most groundbreaking art of his time.

Tamsin Evernden is a specialist in the Victorian Pictures Department, London. Special thanks to Krystyna Matyjaskiewicz for her help in preparing this article.

Article appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of Christie's Magazine