News in museums

Jacques Joseph Tissot, born in Nantes and a student of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, is a major artist of the second half of the 19th century. He was a fascinating, ambiguous figure whose career spanned the English Channel.
Although he has regularly featured in exhibitions devoted to this period, this retrospective is the first dedicated to him in Paris since the exhibition organised at the Petit Palais in 1985.

In the late 1850s, Tissot made his debut in the capital, where his passion for Japanese art and his connections with the most influential circles helped further his painting. In the melting pot that was Paris, in an era when modernity, as formulated by Baudelaire, found its expression in the paintings of Whistler, Manet and Degas, Tissot, with his dandy image, was popular with fashionable society.
After the war of 1870 and the Paris Commune, he moved to London and pursued a high profile career where he moved in the best circles.
Gradually his work focused on the initially radiant, then increasingly frail figure of his companion, Kathleen Newton, who was always present in his paintings. After her death in 1882, Tissot decided to return to France.
His career continued with images of Parisian women of different social classes engaged in various occupations, the subject of a great series of paintings, Women of Paris), and explorations of mystical and religious subjects, with the Prodigal Son series and hundreds of illustrations of the Bible, which brought him great fame at the turn of the 19th century.

With its focus on the figure of James Tissot and a desire to set the art of this painter in the artistic and social context of his time, the exhibition presents both the great successes of an artist who often created iconic images, and his boldest experiments.
It also examines his materials and painting techniques, the themes that were dear to him and their variations, as well as his desire to express himself in different media, such as prints, photography and cloisonné enamels, in addition to painting.

Curators
Marine Kisiel, curator, Musée d’Orsay
Melissa E. Buron, Director, Art Division at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Paul Perrin, curator, Musée d’Orsay
Cyrille Sciama, director, Musée des impressionnismes Giverny

Picture:
James Tissot (1836 – 1902)La galerie du HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth)Vers 1876Huile sur toileH. 68,6 ; L. 91,8 cm
Royaume-Uni, Londres, Tate Collection
© Tate, Londres, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Tate Photography

Musée d’Orsay
1 rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris

Opening hours:
– Open from 9.30am to 6pm daily,
except Mondays
& late night on Thursdays until 9.45pm
– Closed on Mondays

Learn more

The exhibition Giorgio de Chirico. Metaphysical painting retraces the career and the artistic and philosophic influences of the artist Giorgio de Chirico from Munich to Turin, then to Paris where he discovered the artistic avant-garde of his era, and lastly Ferrare.

The connections between the painter – discovered by Apollinaire and subsequently backed by the art dealer Paul Guillaume – and the Parisian cultural and literary circles will be highlighted as never before.

 Born in Greece and trained in the fount of classical culture and late German Romanticism, de Chirico developed the foundations of a new artistic exploration alongside his younger brother Alberto Savinio. A student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich as of 1908, he discovered the thinking of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer as well as the works of Böcklin and Klinger. After travelling to Milan then Florence, it was in France, and more specifically Paris, as of autumn 1911, that he established his unique visual vocabulary through contact with the modernist artistic revolutions. He was quickly noticed by numerous artistic celebrities of the time, among whom Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Raynal, André Salmon, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Jean Paulhan were the first to take an interest in and promote his work.

The exhibition thus comes into its own at the Musée de l’Orangerie alongside the figure of Paul Guillaume, the first art dealer to work with Giorgio de Chirico. On his return to Italy in 1915, he and his brother Savinio were sent to Ferrare for military reasons, where he continued his artistic research. This period (June 1915-December 1918) provided an opportunity for painters Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi to get to know the two brothers, thus resulting in the creation of what was later to be known as the “metaphysical movement” which brings the exhibition to a close. 

Exhibition organised by the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg 

Curators

General curator: Paolo Baldacci, Président of the Archivio dell’Arte Metafisica

Exhibition in Paris: Cécile Girardeau, curator, Musée de l’Orangerie

Exhibition in Hamburg: Dr. Annabelle Görgen-Lammers, curator, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Musée de l’Orangerie
Jardin de Tuileries
Place de la Concorde (Seine side)
75001 Paris

Opening hours:
Open daily from 9am to 6pm except Tuesdays

Learn more