Date: 23/10/2015

Event: James Tissot

For the first time in Italy, the highly anticipated exhibition on the great French painter James Tissot (Nantes, 1836 – Buillon 1902). His works can finally be admired at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome (26 September 2015 – 21 February 2016) after the important exhibitions dedicated to him all over the world such as James Tissot at the Petit Palais (Paris – 1985), Victorian Life Modern Love (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven Connecticut – Musée du Québec, Québec City, Canada – Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, between 1999 and 2000), James Tissot et ses Maîtres in Nantes at the Musée des Beaux-arts (2005) and finally The Life of Christ exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2009).

Refined protagonist of the elite of his time, envied and loved in equal measure, James Tissot is a painter whose art is still in some respects an enigma, between Impressionist influences and pre-Raphaelite instances.

French by birth but British by adoption, lived at ease among conservatives and liberals, Tissot celebrates in his paintings the life of the upper middle class – the class brought into vogue in the Victorian era between the industrial revolution and colonialism – transforming everyday life into heroic and celebrative, turning every gesture into a cliché that is not without originality.

Dart – Chiostro del Bramante and Arthemisia Group, with the patronage of the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Rome, strongly believed in the need to present an artist still little celebrated to the Italian public.

On display 80 works from international museums such as the Tate in London, the Petit Palais and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which tell the whole artistic career of the painter and the influence that the Parisian environment and the reality in London, giving account of his sentimental and mystical vein, his incredible talent as a colourist and his interest in fashion.

Among the works on display, masterpieces such as “The Captain’s Daughter” and “The Warrior’s Daughter” both from 1873 next to the “HMS Calcutta” Gallery (1886) which illustrate the main themes of his art, always treated with psychological depth and which attest to his talent as a colourist and a fine observer of his time.

The exhibition is organized with the exceptional support of the Orsay Museum, with Generali Italia as a sponsor and as a partner of the Trenitalia initiative.