James Jacques Joseph Tissot

(French, 1836-1902)

Un déjeuner

Footnotes

Provenance
Purchased from the artist in 1868 for 4,500 francs by French banker Michel Heine.
Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol.
Acquired by the present owner from an art dealer in Switzerland, circa 1980.
Private collection, UK.

Exhibited
Paris, Salon, 1868, no. 2389.

Literature
Grangedor, J., 'Salon de 1868', Gazette des beaux-arts, 25, 1868, p. 16.
Thoré, Théophile (W. Bürger), Salons de W. Bürger 1861 à 1868, Paris 1870, vol. 2, p. 488.
Misfeldt, Willard E., James Jacques Joseph Tissot: A Bio-Critical Study, Washington University, 1971, pp. 96, 98-101 and figure 55.
Misfeldt, Willard E., The Albums of James Tissot, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982, illustrated p. 34 as plate I-57 (location given incorrectly, p. 126, as Kurt E. Schon Ltd, New Orleans, who had the oil-on-panel replica).
Wentworth, Michael, James Tissot, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 73-4, 200 and plate 60, image courtesy of the Marquess of Bristol.
Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, ed., James Tissot, Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1984, p. 101, note to catalogue number 18.
Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, ed., James Tissot, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, 1985, p. 149, note to catalogue number 20.
Wood, Christopher, Tissot: The life and work of Jacques Joseph Tissot 1836-1902, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1986, p.47 and plate 36 (oil-on-panel replica incorrectly identified as the oil-on-canvas Salon version, and incorrectly giving medium and size of the latter).
Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, 'Tissot's Sales Notebook (Carnet de Ventes),' in Melissa E. Buron, ed., James Tissot, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/Delmonico Books–Prestel, 2019, pp. 272 and 335.


This scene of 18th century flirtation, replete with storytelling detail, marks a change in subject-matter for paintings sent to the Paris Salon exhibition by French artist James Tissot during the 1860s. Christened Jacques-Joseph after his birth in the port city of Nantes, north-west France, Tissot had been called James since childhood and used that name professionally as an artist from his first acceptance at the Salon in 1859. Alongside modern-dress portraits, Tissot initially painted compositions inspired by Northern Renaissance works, his best-known pictures focusing on Marguerite, the heroine of Goethe's Faust. From 1864 he exhibited modern-life paintings at the Salon but in 1868 showed Un déjeuner [A Luncheon], innovatively based on 1780s-90s artworks that were having an influence on contemporary fashionable wear, though not yet on fine art. Historical costume allowed Tissot to get away with depicting saucy content, as well as implying political commentary, without fear of censure.

Un déjeuner is set in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, with characteristic tall, narrow merchants' houses lining a quayside crowded with shipping, and the Laurenskerk or Church of St Lawrence tower in the distance. A man and woman in late-18th-century dress are sitting at the table of a café seemingly deserted apart from two men at a table behind them. Remainders of fruit, wine and bread, and the presence of coffee, indicate the meal is nearing its end. Opposite the woman there is an empty chair with used napkin, and an empty plate with spoon, coffee cup and saucer, beside which is a used knife, cut lemon and crust of bread. Have these been left by the young man in red greatcoat, powdered wig and black tricorne, sitting now beside the woman and leaning so close that his chair is toppling? Or is he taking advantage of the temporary absence of her luncheon companion, whose travel bags lie under the table by the chair? The bags and quayside proximity suggest that the man, or another male companion, is a traveller just arrived or about to depart. Fallen autumn leaves could mean an imminent ending.

The young man gazes at the woman with rapt attention, his hands clasped. Behind him on the trellis are red nasturtiums, symbolising (in the language of flowers) passionate love and strong desire. Nasturtiums may be the red blooms in the woman's bouquet of fragrant white phlox, symbolising honest intentions, and no doubt given by an admirer before placed on a chair with her parasol and bag. She looks at the young man with an arch expression and slight smile, holding her coffee cup and saucer daintily, her little finger raised and adorned with a ring signifying disinterest in a relationship, her ring-finger with what looks like a marriage band. Yet disinterest is belied by her daring show of petticoat, crossed legs, and ankles (then considered erotic) revealing embroidered 'clocks' on her blue stockings (synonymous with daring women). A note (bearing Tissot's signature) has fallen from her open bag; dropped notes were favourite devices for arrangement of clandestine meetings. Her lapdog, a Maltese, stares impassively at the viewer, as if resigned and having 'seen it all'. A single pear half and a half-lemon bode ill for paired happiness. Tissot liked to incorporate ambiguous storytelling clues that could be read in many different ways and exhibition visitors, as well as collectors, delighted in them.

At the picture's centre, triangulated between the gazing couple, is a key object: a cream-ware tea caddy with enamel-painted portrait of Prince William V of Orange (1748-1806), produced to commemorate his restoration to power as Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic in 1787, thanks to military intervention by his brother-in-law, King Frederick William II of Prussia. Such china, with Prince William's easily recognisable portrait, was to some Europeans a pro-monarchist symbol; in 1860s France it could be read as indicating support for members of the royal House of Orléans, exiled by the Bonapartist emperor Napoleon III. The tea caddy's presence is anomalous here, since coffee and wine are being drunk rather than tea, but nothing is arbitrary in Tissot's compositions and he must have had a purpose. Tissot appears to have owned the caddy, which features in 1870s pictures; whether he was a monarchist is uncertain. Prince William's reign as Stadtholder also exemplified military and political incompetence, so the caddy could imply criticism of Napoleon III's competence. Accusations of profligacy were levelled at both rulers and may be referenced by the sculpture on the painting's right of a man in 18th-century clothes and tricorne hat, sitting astride a barrel and pouring wine. It recalls Dutch 1780s satirical prints of Prince William as a heavy drinker or as Bacchus, the god of wine. William's rule was short-lived: alliance with his Prussian brother-in-law and King George III, William's cousin, resulted in war with Revolutionary France in 1793 after King Louis XVI's beheading, and Dutch defeat in 1795.

Tissot's painting is set around the early 1790s. A man in 'bonnet rouge', emblem of the French Revolution that erupted in 1789, drinks beer at the far table. Also fashionable during the French Revolution were black ribbons round women's necks, alluding to the guillotine. The red-coated young man is an incroyable or 1790s punk, with double-caped collar, huge brass buttons and chin-high white cravat. His female companion lacks the puffed-up 'pouter pigeon' kerchief and powdered, fluffed-out hair of a true merveilleuse (1790s punk) but her broad-brimmed, beribboned hat and finely-striped gown are true to 1780s dress and permeated early-1870s fashions, when black neck-ribbons also became all the rage. Some 19th-century writers credited Tissot's paintings with influencing contemporary dress. Tissot was drawing on late-18th-century imagery of love scenes and frivolous behaviour, as painted by Moreau le Jeune, Louis-Léopold Boilly and Philibert-Louis Debucourt, and satirised by James Gillray, with print reproductions of their works widely circulated and collected in 1860s Paris. There was a revival of interest in 18th-century fine and decorative art, though influence and imitation in 1860s paintings and fashion derived more from the pre-Revolutionary ancien regime than the Revolutionary period that attracted Tissot. He collected 18th-century china, silver-ware, glass, furniture and fashion accessories, and items in the picture were likely painted from things Tissot owned. The red greatcoat and black tricorne were probably borrowed theatre props: they feature in Tissot's small paintings of actors and other works made around 1868/69. Both of the couple might have been modelled by actors, since Tissot was a great fan of theatre and opera with many friends in those spheres. The striped gown and hat were either theatre props or Tissot's own, appearing in a number of other 18th-century-dress compositions.

Un déjeuner was bought by French banker Michel Heine (1819-1904) after its exhibition at the 1868 Paris Salon. Cousin of German-Jewish Romantic poet Heinrich Heine, Michel was the son of a banker from Hanover who had settled in Bordeaux and tasked Michel and his older brother Armand with developing banking in America. Both brothers married in New Orleans, Michel to Amelie Miltenberger, the daughter of an architect and cast-iron importer. (Their daughter Alice would marry Prince Albert I of Monaco.) When Maximilian became emperor of Mexico in 1864 with French backing, Michel Heine led a group of bankers given the right to issue Mexican banknotes. He had recently returned to France with his family when he purchased the present lot. Michel and Armand were associated with the Fould bank (their sister having married into the Fould family) and in 1883 founded their own bank, A. et M. Heine, which later became part of the Rothschild bank. Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol (1915-85), a subsequent owner of this work, was a notorious playboy and convicted thief, with a huge fortune from business dealings (including arms sales) and inherited wealth, spending his later years as a tax exile in Monaco. He was Chancellor of the Monarchist League and may have been attracted by Tissot's inclusion of the pro-monarchist tea caddy as well as the blue-stockinged woman with auburn ringlets and beauty patches, making eyes at her love-struck admirer.

Exhibition reviewers in 1868 said the flirtation in Tissot's painting was timeless. A photograph of Un déjeuner was published by Maison Bingham (the commercial business of Paris-based photographer Robert Jefferson Bingham) and sold widely in different sizes through various worldwide outlets until at least the late 1870s. Tissot painted a smaller-size (22 x 17 in. or 55.9 x 43.2 cm) almost identical copy (replica) of Un déjeuner, on panel rather than canvas. It was bought from the artist in 1869 for 2,000 francs by a member of the Tribunal de Commerce (commercial court), who were all tradesmen. In 1881 it was auctioned in Paris, attaining a hammer price of 3,700 francs. It was subsequently owned by Robert Martin, Paris, Galerie Spiess, Paris (1976) David Hughes, London, Roy Miles Fine Paintings, London, and Kurt E. Schon Ltd, New Orleans. This panel version was lent by a Texas private collector to the 1988 James Tissot exhibition that toured in Japan, and was auctioned at Christie's, London, in 2007. The most noticeable difference is that the oil-on-panel version has an onion-domed steeple in the distance rather than the Laurenskerk tower in the present painting.

We are grateful to Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz for compiling this catalogue entry.