"Berthe"

Click On The Title To See A Larger Image

Click Here To View Additional Works By James Tissot

(1883)

< Prev / Next >

"Berthe", 1883, etching and drypoint, 362x279mm;  14 1/4" x 11";  full margins. Signed in pencil, lower left.  With the artist's red ink stamp (Lugt 1545, lower left recto).  Signed and dated in plate, lower right.  An excellent, richly inked and velvety impression with the burr printing strongly [Wentworth 74; Misfeldt 67].

James Jacques Tissot (1836-1902) began etching in 1860 with the art form's popular revival, but then stopped after 1861 and did not etch again until 1875.  "Berthe" is the only etched replica of a Tissot pastel portrait.  "Berthe" is the mirror image of the pastel upon which it is based.  The pastel, which is now in the Petit Palais, Paris, was exhibited at the Galerie Sedelmeyer in 1885 (No.36) and as "Berthe" (No. 48) in London in 1886.

Mrs. Kathleen Newton (1854-1882) was Tissot's primary model during the period of his most intense printmaking activities, appearing in two dozen of his prints.  And, until her untimely death of tuberculosis at the age of 28 in the autumn of 1882, Kathleen Newton was the center of Tissot's art and life.  The beautiful divorcee was Tissot's muse and his art a celebration of her beauty. However, the identity of the sitter for "Berthe" is unknown.   She is the same model that Tissot used in "Sunday Morning" [Misfeldt 65]. There is a livelier sense of personality and a directness of psychological rapport in "Berthe" that harkens back to images of Kathleen Newton that contrast with the coolly detached reader of "The Newspaper" [Misfeldt 66].

"Berthe" is in a Larson-Juhl "Craig Ponzio" Verona Collection 32 1/4" x 28 1/2" frame.  The charcoal earth tone frame has a raised band of leaf and bud carving. The matching wood fillet echoes the frame. The dusk suede outer and fieldstone inner mats are acid and lignin free and are protected with Acrylite-AR OP3 (UV) by CYRO .......   SOLD