(15 October 1836 – 8 August 1902)
Jacques Joseph Tissot was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women’s fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. His career included work as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé.
Tissot served in the Franco-Prussian War on the side of France and later the Paris Commune before moving to London in 1871, where he would find further success as an artist as well as meet Irishwoman Kathleen Newton, who came to live with him as a close companion and muse until her death in 1882. Tissot maintained close relations with the Impressionist movement for much of his life, including James Abbott Whistler and friend and mentee Edgar Degas. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1894.[1]