Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ
Jacques Joseph Tissot
1886-1894
opaque watercolor over graphite on wove paper mounted on pulp board
16.4 x 9.5 cm.
credit: Brooklyn Museum of Art / The Bridgeman Art Library

THE VISION OF JACQUES JOSEPH TISSOT

As the Host was elevated and I bowed my head and closed my eyes, I saw a strange and thrilling picture. It seemed to me that I was looking at the ruins of a modern castle…then a peasant and his wife picked their way over the littered ground; wearily he threw the buddle that contained their all, and the woman seated herself on a fallen pillar, burying her face in her hands….And then there came a strange figure gliding towards these human ruins over the broken remnants of the castle. Its feet and hands were pierced and bleeding, its head was wreathed in thorns….And this figure, needing no name, seated itself by the man, and leaned its head upon his shoulder, seeming to say…"See, I have been more miserable than you; I am the solution to all your problems; without me civilization is a ruin."

Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836–1902) was born in Nantes, France. In 1856 he moved to Paris where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and exhibited in the Paris Salon for the first time at the age of 23. Befriended by Édouard Manet (1837–1883) and Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Tissot experienced commercial success with his paintings of everyday life in Paris, particularly sophisticated women, but not the critical acclaim he sought.

In 1870, Tissot fought to defend Paris in the Franco-Prussian War. After Paris capitulated, he joined the Commune. Upon its bloody suppression, Tissot fled to London to avoid possible imprisonment or execution. There he chronicled of Victorian society, earning over a million francs. In 1875 he met Kathleen Newton (1854-1882), a 21-year old divorcee with two small children. She moved in with him, and became the subject of many of his most evocative paintings of life in London. They lived together for seven years until 1882 when she died of consumption at the age of 28. Shattered, Tissot left London only five days after her funeral, abandoning his unfinished canvases, paints, brushes, and house, and returned to Paris.

He embarked on a series of fifteen large canvases depicting Parisian women of various types and classes. Again, the beautiful Newton appeared as a model for several of these paintings. In an attempt to channel her spirit, he began to attend séances. In 1885, while working on the last painting of the series entitled Sacred Music, in which a young woman and a nun are seen singing in the organ loft of a church, he visited the church of St. Suplice for inspiration. During Mass, he experienced the vision, recounted above, that was to change his life.

He reconverted to Catholicism and began what would occupy him for almost a decade: creating over 700 oils, watercolors, and prints illustrating Old Testament stories and the life of Jesus, of which this watercolor is one.

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