Gainsborough's Secret Tissot's Muse Victorian Values At The Piano Sale 6520, Lot 21 James Jaques Tissot (1836-1902) The Hammock Oil on canvas Estimate: £1,200,000-1,500,000 Tissot's Muse The beautiful Mrs. Newton, the love of Tissot's life, seen on a summer afternoon. By Peter Brown Kathleen Newton, a beautiful Irish divorcée, was the great love of Tissot's life. They met in 1876, six years after he had fled to London from the Paris Commune. Their happiness and quiet domesticity inspired some of his greatest works, including The Hammock. This was one of the seven pictures Tissot exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. Three showed Kathleen sitting in a hammock in the garden of their house in Grove End Road, St. John's Wood. (The pond and pergola can also be seen in the paintings of Sir Lawrence and Lady Alma-Tadema, who lived there later.) The Grosvenor Gallery, a radical venture launched in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay as an alternative to the staid conservatism of the Royal Academy, championed Burne-Jones and Whistler and became a showcase for the Aesthetic movement. It was the perfect venue for Tissot's art, which at the time was considered greatly daring in both style and subject. Along with Manet and Whistler, Tissot was among the first artists interested in Japonisme. He collected Oriental art, and his depiction of Mrs. Newton owes a debt to Japan in the large parasol, and in the bold and highly unusual composition, reminiscent of the single-figure format of Japanese Ukiyo-e painting. Tissot's subject-matter riled contemporary critics, one of whom pronounced that he 'tries our patience somewhat hardly, for these ladies in hammocks, showing a very unnecessary amount of petticoat and stocking, and remarkable for little save luxurious indolence and insolence, are hardly fit subjects for such elaborate painting.' This smacks of the disfavour contemporary society poured on the lovers' irregular liaison. It was no coincidence that Holman-Hunt set The Awakening Conscience in another such villa in St. John's Wood, where said the Illustrated London News, 'the London soot appears to be fast penetrating' - implying that with it came the degradation of the city's morals. None of this seems to have troubled Tissot. Resolute in his happiness, he swam against the prevailing moral tide. The year 1879 has been seen as the peak of his achievement. One of his other Grosvenor Gallery pictures, L'Orpheline, was sold by Christie's in 1993 for £2,071,129 - then a world record for a Victorian painting. But within three years his paradise was shattered. Mrs. Newton died of consumption and Tissot returned to Paris a broken man. His final years were spent making trips to the Holy Land and illustrating the Bible. These evocative images of summer afternoons are an eloquent testament to the love he once enjoyed. Inquiries: Martin Beisly Tel: +44 (0)20 7389 2468 Back to top