Life and Times of Jesus by Tissot

Samples of watercolor paintings by James Tissot from The Life and Times of Jesus.

        In 1885, Tissot had a revival of his Catholic faith, which led him to spend the rest of his life making paintings about Biblical events. Many of his artist friends were skeptical about his conversion, as it conveniently coincided with the French Catholic revival, a reaction against the secular attitude of the French Third Republic. At a time when French artists were working in impressionism, pointilism, and heavy oil washes, Tissot was moving toward realism in his watercolors. To assist in his completion of biblical illustrations, Tissot traveled to the Middle East in 1886, 1889, and 1896 to make studies of the landscape and people. His series of 365 gouache (opaque watercolor) illustrations showing the life of Christ were shown to critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences in Paris (1894–5), London (1896) and New York (1898–9), before being bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. They were published in a French edition in 1896–7 and in an English one in 1897–8, bringing Tissot vast wealth and fame. During July 1894, Tissot was awarded the Légion d'honneur, France's most prestigious medal. Tissot spent the last years of his life working on paintings of subjects from the Old Testament. Although he never completed the series, he exhibited 80 of these paintings in Paris in 1901 and engravings after them were published in 1904.

From the Life and Times of Jesus by Tissot:

1. The Adoration of The Magi
2. The Magnificat
3. Saint Joseph seeks a lodging at Bethlehem
4. The Massacre of the Innocents
5. The Childhood of Saint John the Baptist
6. Jesus found!
7. The Winnower
8. The Baptism of Jesus
9. Calling of Saint Andrew and Saint John
10. All the City was gathered together at the door
11. Healing of the Lepers at Capernaum 
12. Jesus teaching on the sea-shore
13. In the Villages the sick were brought unto Him
14. The Pharisee and the Publican
15. The Resurrection of Lazarus
16. The evil Counsel of Caiaphas 
17. The first Denial of Saint Peter
18. Our Lord Jesus Christ
19. Judas and with him a great multitude
20. The Bridge over the Brook Kedron
21. Christ mocked in the House of Caiaphas
22. What Our Savior saw from the Cross
23. The Scourging of the Face
24. The Scouring of the Back
25. The Crown of Thorns
26. The Scala Sancta
27. Simon of Cyrene compelled to bear the Cross
28. The Penitent Thief
29. Eloi! Eloi! lama sabachthani!
30. It is finished 
31. The People beholding the things that were done smote their breasts
32. The Soul of the Penitent Thief
33. The Descent from the Cross
34. Christ carried to the Tomb
35. The Resurrection
36. Christ appearing to Saint Peter

self portrait of Tissot

       In an article by Clifton Harby Levy he says of Tissot and his paintings: "He went to Palestine, there to study the places associated by Scripture and tradition with the name of Jesus. He stayed there two or three months, making sketches which he thought would suffice for paintings dealing with Jesus and his disciples. He was on the point of returning to Paris, when he looked over his drawings and saw how few and unsatisfactory they were. He determined to make a hundred, but when those were completed their paucity again impressed him. He would make a hundred more; but even then he was unsatisfied. It was only after he had finished three hundred and sixty-five paintings in oil and water color, and had, while ten years had elapsed, made a hundred and fifty pen-and-ink sketches, that he felt content with having done his best to tell the story of Jesus as it had never been told before.

       Mr. Tissot made a careful study of the Gospels. He had read them so often that he knew them by heart, but he felt that without the background of the country and its customs, they were often incomprehensible. He tried to free himself from all prejudices and dogmas. He wished to know "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and present it by the power of paint and pencil to the Christian world. With this end in view he remained in Palestine for ten long years, following the steps of Jesus as closely as he could that he might catch the spirit and atmosphere of Him he was trying to trace. He could not give a contemporaneous life of Jesus, but he could, at least, try to come as near to it as possible. So he studied every ruin. He talked with the rabbis in Jerusalem; he conversed with Turk and Syrian, learning all of the traditions so carefully treasured up in the Orient.

       He trod, as far as could be ascertained, the very places where Jesus walked, and on the hallowed soil he posed his living models--men and women who, with costume and custom unchanged by the centuries might fitly represent the figures of the past, In the consecrated enthusiasm of his art, he has reproduced, with a realistic fidelity that has astonished the critical world, the scenes and incidents of the Gospel history, with figures full of character, and amid such surroundings as no other painter ever drew. His figures are those of the real people of Palestine of the first century." 

• Bible collections by James Tissot at The Brooklyn Museum of Art
• Portraits by James Tissot