Lot Essay
By the late 1860s Tissot had emerged from his early involvement with historical themes (see lot 117) and was well on the way to establishing himself as a peintre de la vie moderne. Une Veuve is the most sophisticated of a group of works dating from this period, all focusing on the figure of a woman and probably betraying the influence of Alfred Stevens. In the case of the present picture, Stevens had exhibited a work of the same title at the Salon of 1861, and pretty widows are to found in his work throughout the decade. When Tissot's Une Veuve appeared at the Salon of 1869 (together with Jeunes Femmes regardant des objets japonais; Wentworth, op. cit., col. pl.II), both Casimir-Perier and Elie Roy jocularly described the subject as 'une veuve très consolable'. In his review in L'Artiste, Roy commented further: 'Rien de plus simple comme sujet, rien de plus compliqué comme exécution. Tout ce que notre luxe hétérogène peut entasser de bizarreries élégantes; siéges en jonc tressé, corbeilles, jardinières, tabourets, tout cela est rendu, détaillé comme pour un inventaire, avec une perfection désespérante, car par un oubli complet de la perspective aérienne et des effets de plein air, aucun objet n'est à sa place.'
More recently, Michael Wentworth has written: 'The fashionable - and clearly restive - widow, immured in the country by the tedious properties of mourning, with only her mother-in-law (or mother) and daughter for company, is almost surely intended as a modern-dress illustration of the fable Le Jeune Veuve from the Fables of La Fontaine; such grief as she could muster has given way to amorous musing long before the date of its official termination. Her dreamy expression is carefully contrasted with the fidgeting of the child and placid contentment of the old lady, and the drift of her thoughts is given clear expression by the copy of Bouchardon's Cupid Stringing his Bow in the garden behind the arbor. With its elaborate staging and cynical parody of the classics, Une Veuve can hardly have failed to delight its Parisian audience, its 'desperate perfection' of technique, relentless and arid, only heightening the pleasure for many.'
Tissot was to return to the theme of bereavement in his later career. It is handled in two works dating from his years in London, The Widower and Orphan (Wentworth, pls. 122, 138), and again in Sans dot (Wentworth, pl.180) from La Femme à Paris, the series of fifteen large canvasses showing parisiennes of various classes at their occupations and amusements which he began on his return to Paris in 1882 and completed three years later. Indeed Sans dot is very similar to Une Veuve in composition, showing a young widow seated in the foreground with an elderly chaperone reading a newspaper a little behind her on the right. As Michael Wentworth observes, however, the subject here 'takes on a very different complexion: Sans dot, though superficially similar, reveals the hopeless future of a dowerless orphan, rather than the complacent anticipation of a rich widow. More important, the jaded wit of Une Veuve is replaced by a narrative tone of sympathy which sets the two pictures worlds apart.'
More recently, Michael Wentworth has written: 'The fashionable - and clearly restive - widow, immured in the country by the tedious properties of mourning, with only her mother-in-law (or mother) and daughter for company, is almost surely intended as a modern-dress illustration of the fable Le Jeune Veuve from the Fables of La Fontaine; such grief as she could muster has given way to amorous musing long before the date of its official termination. Her dreamy expression is carefully contrasted with the fidgeting of the child and placid contentment of the old lady, and the drift of her thoughts is given clear expression by the copy of Bouchardon's Cupid Stringing his Bow in the garden behind the arbor. With its elaborate staging and cynical parody of the classics, Une Veuve can hardly have failed to delight its Parisian audience, its 'desperate perfection' of technique, relentless and arid, only heightening the pleasure for many.'
Tissot was to return to the theme of bereavement in his later career. It is handled in two works dating from his years in London, The Widower and Orphan (Wentworth, pls. 122, 138), and again in Sans dot (Wentworth, pl.180) from La Femme à Paris, the series of fifteen large canvasses showing parisiennes of various classes at their occupations and amusements which he began on his return to Paris in 1882 and completed three years later. Indeed Sans dot is very similar to Une Veuve in composition, showing a young widow seated in the foreground with an elderly chaperone reading a newspaper a little behind her on the right. As Michael Wentworth observes, however, the subject here 'takes on a very different complexion: Sans dot, though superficially similar, reveals the hopeless future of a dowerless orphan, rather than the complacent anticipation of a rich widow. More important, the jaded wit of Une Veuve is replaced by a narrative tone of sympathy which sets the two pictures worlds apart.'