Tissot or not Tissot: it isn't a question

COURTESY YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART Ask Wiegle.

The streets are wet, the sky is overcast. The gothic towers loom ever higher above you. Yet just when Yale seems to be at its annual height of dreariness, the Yale Center for British Art (BAC) issues a remedy. All you must do is climb to its third floor and immerse yourself in the world of Victorian England.

In its latest offering, Victorian Life/Modern Love, the BAC has chosen to focus on the works of the French artist James Tissot (1836-1902). Consisting of one hundred of Tissot's paintings, prints and watercolors, this exhibition provides a comprehensive retrospective of an artist renowned for subtle ironies, underlying critiques, and a passionate admiration for Victorian society. Neither an impressionist nor a modernist, Tissot located his own style of artistic expression somewhere between the two.

One might recognize this combination best in London Visitors, a large oil on canvas that depicts, with careful attention to detail, a well-dressed couple standing outside a British museum. Despite the painting's aesthetic beauty and its near perfect balance of form and of color, something is awry. The woman is staring straight at the viewer, and her expression is one of unsettling ambiguity. The relationship of the two is suddenly thrown into doubt. It is through such subtle details that Tissot allows a psychological complexity into his scenes of Victorian life, rendering them enigmatically skeptical of the society that they so beautifully portray.

The presentation of this exhibition emphasizes the conflicting sentiments that run throughout Tissot's work. The bright oil paint of a portrait of Frederick Gustavus Burnaby—the portrait is almost flippant in its depiction of his nonchalant expression, his reclined posture, and the cigarette waving carelessly in his hand—is juxtaposed with the black and white drypoint of three etchings depicting scenes from the Franco-Prussian war. The presence of each of these works illuminates the others around it. Comparing the frightened eyes of a freezing soldier to Burnaby's bored expression, for example, reveals the degree to which luxury goes unappreciated by the Victorian man. At the same time, it is through the whimsical portrait of a man in rest that we can better understand the humanizing irony of the soldier, reclined in a hospital bed, in a state of wearied repose.

The BAC does more than just a remarkable job of displaying these works; it also makes a commendable effort to explain them in a way that is accessable to a wide audience. With two computer consoles at the end of the exhibit, patrons can explore one of Tissot's most powerful works, The Young Lady of the Shop, using an interactive CD-rom program. As gimmicky as this might sound, the program accomplishes what it intends to do: to familiarize the viewer with the painting and its background while providing a detailed analysis of the painting's subtleties and its implications. The program takes advantage of its visual format by zooming in and out of The Young Lady of the Shop, as well as by conjuring up images of other artistic works that may have influenced its creation. Though the patron must step back through the exhibit in order to find the painting again, the experience creates an appreciation for this masterpiece.

The curators of Victorian Life/Modern Love will tell you that it is a rare exhibition because it is the first American retrospective of James Tissot in a generation. One of the works, The Hammock, is experiencing its first public appearance in 120 years. However, the exhibition is rare for a different, more gratifying reason: it is one of those occasional exhibitions that comes together in nearly all respects, presenting beautiful art in such a manner as to allow one to perceive its deeper, more haunting implications.

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