Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836 – 1902), was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist.
He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the beginning of his career was interested in medieval styles. He worked as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé and he incorporated elements of realism, early Impressionism, academic art, but also biblical, and Japanese subjects into his work.
During his career he produced a variety of themes focused on genre paintings and women’s fashion of the Belle Époque, while he explored the social and sexual tension between men and women in the context of strictly gender-segregated Victorian society.
Tissot served in the Franco-Prussian War on the side of France and later the Paris Commune before moving to London in 1871, where he would find further success as an artist as well as meet Irish woman Kathleen Newton, who came to live with him as a close companion and muse until her death in 1882. In 1894 he was awarded the French Legion of Honor.
