The Shop Girl (Tissot)

Last updated
The Shop Girl
James Tissot - La demoiselle de magasin - Google Art Project.jpg
Artist James Tissot
Year1883–1885
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions146.1 cm× 101.6 cm(57.5 in× 40.0 in)
Location Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The Shop Girl (La Demoiselle de Magasin) is a painting by James Tissot in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. The painting depicts a young woman standing inside a shop selling ribbons and dresses. In one hand she holds a wrapped package of newly purchased items. With the other she holds open the door to the store for the viewer to depart. The shop is filled with piles of ribbons. Outside, a busy Parisian street scene is visible through the shop windows. A well dressed man stares in through the window and is greeted by the other girl in the shop.

The painting was created in the period 1883–1885 using Tissot's distinctive style of dry pigments and small brush strokes—not impressionism, but still a major departure from the Academy style. It also reflects some of Tissot's main interests, such as the materialistic world of objects and clothing of the late nineteenth century. [1] The painting also employs Tissot's favourite technique of this period of placing the observer directly in the painting, with the shop girl holding the door open for us. [2] It was first exhibited in 1885 at the Galerie Sedelmeyer. It was a part of an exhibit Tissot titled Quinze tableau sur la femme à Paris (fifteen paintings on the woman of Paris). [3] It was his last major exhibition before Tissot embraced religious subjects and spent the rest of his life painting scenes from the Bible. The painting was gifted to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1968. [4]

Regina Haggo sees this painting as a depiction of barely contained lust. On the floor a fallen ribbon makes a clear heart shape. To Haggo the position of the heart on the floor makes clear this is a baser form of desire. The women are modestly clothed, but Tissot emphasizes their figures, especially the breasts of the woman raising her arms. In this period a woman working outside the home was considered morally dubious. The leering man and the vantage of the viewer can suggest that more than just the clothing is for sale. The man outside may be flirting with the shop girl, but Haggo notes that Tissot emasculated him by having a women's torso overlap his own. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salon des Refusés</span> Art exhibition in Paris, first held in 1863

The Salon des Refusés, French for "exhibition of rejects", is generally known as an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

<i>Le Déjeuner sur lherbe</i> Painting by Édouard Manet

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe – originally titled Le Bain – is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet created in 1862 and 1863.

<i>Arnolfini Portrait</i> 1434 painting by Jan van Eyck

The Arnolfini Portrait is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It forms a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their residence at the Flemish city of Bruges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Tissot</span> French painter and illustrator (1836–1902)

Jacques Joseph Tissot, better known as James Tissot, was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. His career included work as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé.

<i>The Death of General Wolfe</i> 1770 painting by Benjamin West

The Death of General Wolfe is a 1770 painting by Anglo-American artist Benjamin West, commemorating the 1759 Battle of Quebec, where General James Wolfe died at the moment of victory. The painting, containing vivid suggestions of martyrdom, broke a standard rule of historical portraiture by featuring individuals who had not been present at the scene and dressed in modern, instead of classical, costumes. The painting has become one of the best-known images in 18th-century art.

<i>A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881</i> Painting by William Powell Frith

A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 is a painting by the English artist William Powell Frith exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1883. It depicts a group of distinguished Victorians visiting the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1881, just after the death of the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose portrait by John Everett Millais was included on a screen at the special request of Queen Victoria. The room is Gallery III, the largest and most imposing room at Burlington House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Reinhard Weguelin</span> British painter (1849–1927)

John Reinhard Weguelin was an English painter and illustrator, active from 1877 to after 1910. He specialized in figurative paintings with lush backgrounds, typically landscapes or garden scenes. Weguelin emulated the neo-classical style of Edward Poynter and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, painting subjects inspired by classical antiquity and mythology. He depicted scenes of everyday life in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as mythological subjects, with an emphasis on pastoral scenes. Weguelin also drew on folklore for inspiration, and painted numerous images of nymphs and mermaids.

<i>The Gallant Conversation</i> Painting by Gerard ter Borch

The Gallant Conversation is an oil-on-canvas painting from circa 1654 by Gerard ter Borch. A late 18th century French print of the work is titled The Paternal Admonition, apparently believing it showed a father reprimanding his daughter, but modern art historians see it as a conversation between two prospective lovers, either a discussion of a betrothal or, more likely, a customer propositioning a prostitute in a brothel. There are two versions made by the painter, one at the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, and the other at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin.The two paintings are dated to around 1654. The Amsterdam version is 71 cm by 73 cm, with the extra centimeters on the right being taken up by a dog and a door. The dimensions of the Berlin painting is smaller, 70 by 60 cm.

<i>Officer and Laughing Girl</i> Painting by Johannes Vermeer c. 1657

Officer and Laughing Girl, also known as Officer and a Laughing Girl, Officer With a Laughing Girl or, in Dutch, De Soldaat en het Lachende Meisje, was painted by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in around 1657. It was painted in oil on canvas, typical of most Dutch artists of the time, and is 50.5 by 46 cm. It is now one of three pictures by Vermeer in The Frick Collection in New York

<i>Woman Reading a Letter</i> (Vermeer) Painting by Johannes Vermeer c. 1663

Woman Reading a Letter is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, produced in around 1663. It has been part of the collection of the City of Amsterdam since the Van der Hoop bequest in 1854, and in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam since it opened in 1885, the first Vermeer it acquired.

<i>Hotel Lobby</i> Painting by Edward Hopper

Hotel Lobby is a 1943 oil painting on canvas by American realist painter Edward Hopper; it is held in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States.

Past and Present is the title usually given to the series of three oil paintings made by Augustus Egg in 1858, which are designed to be exhibited together as a triptych. When first exhibited at Royal Academy in 1858 the paintings were untitled, but accompanied by a fictional quotation from a diary, "August the 4th – Have just heard that B— has been dead more than a fortnight, so his poor children have now lost both parents. I hear she was seen on Friday last near the Strand, evidently without a place to lay her head. What a fall hers has been!".

<i>The Umbrellas</i> (Renoir)

The Umbrellas is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painted in two phases in the 1880s. It is owned by the National Gallery in London as part of the Lane Bequest but is displayed alternately in London and at the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. From May 2013 to 2019, it returned to Dublin for a six-year period. It is now in the National Gallery London.

<i>I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott</i> Painting by John William Waterhouse

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott is a painting by John William Waterhouse completed in 1915. It is the third painting by Waterhouse that depicts a scene from the Tennyson poem, "The Lady of Shalott". The title of the painting is a quotation from the last two lines in the fourth and final verse of the second part of Tennyson's poem:

<i>Young Mother Sewing</i> (Mary Cassatt) Painting by Mary Cassatt

Young Mother Sewing aka Little Girl Leaning on her Mother's Knee is a 1900 painting by Mary Cassatt. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

<i>Portsmouth Dockyard</i> (Tissot) Painting by James Tissot

Portsmouth Dockyard is an 1877 oil painting by French artist James Tissot. It is a reworking of his 1876 painting On The Thames, which also depicts a man and two women in a boat. It measures 15.0 by 21.5 inches.

<i>The Gallery of H.M.S. Calcutta (Portsmouth)</i> Painting by James Tissot

The Gallery of HMS 'Calcutta' (Portsmouth), also known as Officer and Ladies on Board HMS Calcutta, is an 1876 oil painting by James Tissot. It depicts two ladies in fashionable clothing and a young naval lieutenant, standing on the quarter gallery at the stern of the Royal Navy warship HMS Calcutta. The Tate Gallery in London holds the painting and measures 68.6 by 91.8 centimetres (27.0 in × 36.1 in).

<i>Woman with Umbrella in Front of a Hat Shop</i> Painting by August Macke

Woman with Umbrella in Front of a Hat Shop is an oil-on-canvas painting executed in 1914 by the German painter August Macke. It depicts a woman peeking into a hat shop, painted in an Expressionist style. The painting is in the collection of the Museum Folkwang in Essen.

<i>The Sacrifice of Iphigenia</i> Painting by Paul Delvaux

The Sacrifice of Iphigenia is a 1968 painting by Paul Delvaux. Inspired by Iphigenia's sacrifice in Greek mythology, it depicts five people on a boardwalk. In the foreground are three women, two of whom might be the same person who watches herself, and behind them appears to be a scene of human sacrifice where a man overlooks a woman with an exposed breast.

<i>Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children</i> 1878 painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children is an 1878 oil on canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It depicts Marguerite Charpentier, a French salonist, art collector, and advocate of the Impressionists, and her children Georgette and Paul. The painting is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

References

  1. Gail Dexter. "J.J.J. Tissot: Exciting Victorian." Toronto Star. April 6, 1968, pg. 38
  2. "Tissot Retrospective", by Eugenia Parry Janis. The Burlington Magazine 1968 pg. 303
  3. "Review: James Tissot. New Haven, Québec and Buffalo," by Paul Stirton. The Burlington Magazine 2000 pg. 131.
  4. "James Tissot. The Shop Girl". AGO. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  5. "The joy of shopping." Regina Haggo. The Hamilton Spectator. Sep 26, 2006. pg. G.11