James (Jacques) Joseph Tissot (1836-1902)

When in 1883 James Tissot took up work again in Paris after a decade in London, he embarked on a series of paintings depicting ‘Women in Paris’ (La Femme à Paris), with a follow-up ‘Foreign Woman’ (L’Etrangère). This small oil is probably a compositional study for one of these series. It is broadly similar to a pencil outline in a sketchbook of ideas for pictures of Parisian women that Tissot was working on in 1868-79 (though never exhibited as a series) and returned to in 1883-86. A woman dressed in hourglass bodice of characteristic 1880s shape, with high neckline, and wearing a bonnet, is driving a cabriolet, with a dog running alongside on her right. To her left is a man in top hat on horseback. They are leaving the crowded throng around the Arc de Triomphe, on the Place de l’Étoile, and heading down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (or Avenue du Bois for short, formerly called the Avenue de l’Impératrice, and now the Avenue Foch). Designed as a promenade for carriages, horse-riders and pedestrians, this was the place to be seen, and to see fashionable society. Tissot had a small English-style villa at the far end of the avenue.
We are grateful to Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.