Lot Essay
Tissot's early medievalist style was indebted to the genre troubadour as developed by Ingres and others, but even more to the work of the Belgian artist Baron Leys, whom he visited in Amsterdam in 1859. In this important example his approach is unusually contrived and self-conscious. As Michael Wentworth observes, it 'is conceived in a kind of super-Leysian manner, and its display of bric-à-brac is far more important than its subject. Although Tissot turns to the Bible for his text, its pious lesson of error and forgiveness ... is extinguished by the elaboration of the picture's staging. Previous works had a historical reason for medieval costume, but Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue is medieval entirely at pleasure' (op. cit., 1984, p.39). Most of these 'previous works' had been illustrations to the story of Faust, of which one, Marquerite au Rempart (1861), was offered in these Rooms on 29 November 1991, lot 52.
Critics had long taken issue with Tissot for his archaising manner, and the wilful eccentricity of Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue put them completely out of patience when the picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1863. Hector de Callias, reviewing the exhibition in L'Artiste, invited Tissot to '"regarder le calendrier" and humorously declined further notice until he did so: "M. Tissot est tellement lancé à la poursuite d'Holbein, que personne ne songe à la suivre. Bon voyage! Quand il aura fait assez d'archéologie, quand il lui prendra fantaisie de revenir a la peinture, nous ferons comme le père de l'enfant prodique, qu'il a exposé cete année; nous tuerons le veau gras, et nous lui pardonnerons."'
Tissot always had an eye to publicity, and if this was his object here, he was not unsuccessful. To quote Michael Wentworth again, 'although based on careful and quite accomplished studies from life [one is reproduced in Wentworth, 1984, pl.15], the operatic, if wooden, gestures of Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue brought Tissot to the attention of the cartoonists as well as the critics, suggesting that his works were now popular enough to come in for their share of Parisian wit and abuse. In his Salon de 1863, Cham offers an engagingly skinny prodigal who begs a "papa" of wonderful anatomical distortion and exaggerated medieval dress "de ne plus se laisser faire par M. Tissot qui le rend ridicule"'.
At the Salon of 1863, the picture had a pendant, Le Départ de l'enfant prodigue à Venise (Wentworth, 1984, pl.16). This too was historicist in style, the model here being Carpaccio's St Ursula cycle which Tissot had studied during a visit to Venice in 1862. Despite the artificiality of these pictures, the subject clearly had significance for Tissot since he returned to it in the early 1880s in his well-known series The Prodigal Son in Modern Life (Wentworth, 1984, pls. 154-7), and yet again in two of his paintings illustrating the life of Christ, exhibited at the Champ-de-Mars in 1894. The Prodigal Son in Modern Life makes a particularly telling comparision with the paintings of the early 1860s. As the title implies, the mode is no longer costume drama but contemporary genre. Nonetheless, there is an underlying relationship in that Tissot again resorts to what Wentworth calls 'a clever disjunction of subject and setting' to give his narrative 'added bite'.
Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue was one of the first pictures Tissot exhibited abroad, being shown at the Society of British Artists in London in 1864. The English critics were hardly more enthusiastic than their French counterparts. The former Pre-Raphaelite painter F.G. Stephens, writing in his capacity as art-critic of the Athenaeum, found it 'affected, false, and artificial'; he admired the 'picturesque effect', the 'telling group of figures - friends, servants, or what not - gathered upon the steps of the quaint old chateau', and the 'ably-painted architectural background', but he thought it 'strange that a man who is so powerful an observer of character should condescend to imitate so bizarre a school of painters as that of ancient Flanders.' Only a year earlier Stephens had reviewed another picture indebted to the art of 'ancient Flanders', namely Burne-Jones's Annunciation, lot 97 in this catalogue. Indeed Burne-Jones had subtly combined this influence with that of Carpaccio's St Ursula paintings in the Accademia in Venice, which he, like Tissot, had studied in 1862. This curious correspondence was more than coincidental. Although the two artists were not to meet until the 1870s, they had friends in common by 1862 (including Whistler), and there was enough of a climate of ideas to explain why there were exploring identical ground.
Critics had long taken issue with Tissot for his archaising manner, and the wilful eccentricity of Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue put them completely out of patience when the picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1863. Hector de Callias, reviewing the exhibition in L'Artiste, invited Tissot to '"regarder le calendrier" and humorously declined further notice until he did so: "M. Tissot est tellement lancé à la poursuite d'Holbein, que personne ne songe à la suivre. Bon voyage! Quand il aura fait assez d'archéologie, quand il lui prendra fantaisie de revenir a la peinture, nous ferons comme le père de l'enfant prodique, qu'il a exposé cete année; nous tuerons le veau gras, et nous lui pardonnerons."'
Tissot always had an eye to publicity, and if this was his object here, he was not unsuccessful. To quote Michael Wentworth again, 'although based on careful and quite accomplished studies from life [one is reproduced in Wentworth, 1984, pl.15], the operatic, if wooden, gestures of Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue brought Tissot to the attention of the cartoonists as well as the critics, suggesting that his works were now popular enough to come in for their share of Parisian wit and abuse. In his Salon de 1863, Cham offers an engagingly skinny prodigal who begs a "papa" of wonderful anatomical distortion and exaggerated medieval dress "de ne plus se laisser faire par M. Tissot qui le rend ridicule"'.
At the Salon of 1863, the picture had a pendant, Le Départ de l'enfant prodigue à Venise (Wentworth, 1984, pl.16). This too was historicist in style, the model here being Carpaccio's St Ursula cycle which Tissot had studied during a visit to Venice in 1862. Despite the artificiality of these pictures, the subject clearly had significance for Tissot since he returned to it in the early 1880s in his well-known series The Prodigal Son in Modern Life (Wentworth, 1984, pls. 154-7), and yet again in two of his paintings illustrating the life of Christ, exhibited at the Champ-de-Mars in 1894. The Prodigal Son in Modern Life makes a particularly telling comparision with the paintings of the early 1860s. As the title implies, the mode is no longer costume drama but contemporary genre. Nonetheless, there is an underlying relationship in that Tissot again resorts to what Wentworth calls 'a clever disjunction of subject and setting' to give his narrative 'added bite'.
Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue was one of the first pictures Tissot exhibited abroad, being shown at the Society of British Artists in London in 1864. The English critics were hardly more enthusiastic than their French counterparts. The former Pre-Raphaelite painter F.G. Stephens, writing in his capacity as art-critic of the Athenaeum, found it 'affected, false, and artificial'; he admired the 'picturesque effect', the 'telling group of figures - friends, servants, or what not - gathered upon the steps of the quaint old chateau', and the 'ably-painted architectural background', but he thought it 'strange that a man who is so powerful an observer of character should condescend to imitate so bizarre a school of painters as that of ancient Flanders.' Only a year earlier Stephens had reviewed another picture indebted to the art of 'ancient Flanders', namely Burne-Jones's Annunciation, lot 97 in this catalogue. Indeed Burne-Jones had subtly combined this influence with that of Carpaccio's St Ursula paintings in the Accademia in Venice, which he, like Tissot, had studied in 1862. This curious correspondence was more than coincidental. Although the two artists were not to meet until the 1870s, they had friends in common by 1862 (including Whistler), and there was enough of a climate of ideas to explain why there were exploring identical ground.