The exhibition “James Tissot: The Life of Christ” includes 124 watercolors selected from a set of 350 that depict detailed scenes from the New Testament, from before the birth of Jesus through the Resurrection, in a chronological narrative. On view at the Brooklyn Museum October 23⁊anuary 17, it marks the first time in more than 20 years that any of the Tissot watercolors, a pivotal acquisition that entered the museum’s collection in 1900, have been exhibited.
Organized by Judith F. Dolkart, associate curator, European art, the exhibition will travel to venues to be announced. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog of the complete set of 350 images, to be published by the museum in association with Merrell Publishers Ltd, London.
Born in France, Tissot (1836‱902) had an artistic career in Paris before going to London in the 1870s, where he established himself as a renowned painter of London society, spending 11 years there before returning to Paris in 1882. He then began work on a set of 15 paintings depicting the costumes and manners of fashionable Parisian society women. While visiting the Church of St Sulpice in the course of his research, he experienced a religious vision, after which he embarked on an ambitious project to illustrate the New Testament.
With the same meticulous attention to detail that he had applied to painting high society, he now created these precisely rendered watercolors. In preparation, he made expeditions to the Middle East to record the landscape, architecture, costumes, and customs of the Holy Land and its people, which he recorded in photographs, notes and sketches, convinced that the region had remained unchanged since Jesus’s time. When he returned to his Paris studio he drew upon his research materials to execute the watercolors, concentrating on this project to the exclusion of his previous subject matter.
Unlike earlier artists, who often depicted biblical figures anachronistically, Tissot painted the many figures in costumes he believed to be historically authentic. In addition to the archaeological exactitude of many of the watercolors, the series presents other, highly dramatic and often mystical images, such as “Jesus Ministered to by Angels” and “The Grotto of the Agony.” Tissot’s detailed chronological approach to recounting the life of Christ, combining Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into one continuous narrative, is known as a “harmony” of the Gospels, a departure from the traditional reading that takes each of the separate books in turn.
In 1900, at the suggestion of John Singer Sargent, the president and trustees of the museum’s precursor, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the museum decided to purchase the series at the negotiated price of $60,000. Part of the sum was raised through a pledge of $13,000 from the trustees, but the bulk by public subscription, spurred on, in part, by exhortations published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper urging its readers to contribute. The purchase was a significant acquisition for the institute; the sheer number of watercolors increased by several times the art collection of the fledgling museum and was viewed as having great potential to attract visitors and new members.
In May 1901 the 350 watercolors, newly mounted in gold mats and reframed, went on view for the first time at the museum’s Eastern Parkway location; records seem to indicate they remained on nearly continuous display until the 1930s. Since then, in part because of conservation concerns, they have only rarely been shown, and then only small portions of the series, most recently in late 1989 through early 1990.
The museum is at 200 Eastern Parkway. For information, www.brooklynmuseum.org or 718-638-5000.
