James Tissot was a French painter, born in Nantes in 1836, who died in 1902. He grew rich in London in the 1870s painting elegant scenes of Victorian society. Then the woman who modeled for most of them died, and he spent his last years painting the life of Christ.
People look him up for the women in silk. Almost all of them have the same face.
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The face belonged to Kathleen Newton, an Irish divorcée who had moved into his house in St John's Wood by 1876, with her children. She died of tuberculosis on 9 November 1882. She was twenty-eight. Her niece remembered that Tissot draped the coffin in purple velvet and prayed beside it for hours.
Five days later, after the funeral, he left London for Paris. There he took up séances, and a painter who knew him said he held them every afternoon, once his day's work was done.
On 20 May 1885 he sat at one in London, led by the medium William Eglinton. Eglinton claimed that Newton appeared in the room, and that Tissot recognized her at once and decided to paint the scene.
He did paint it. The canvas shows glowing figures in shroud-like robes. In the same year, in a Paris church, he had a vision that changed what he painted for the rest of his life.
What You'll Discover
Where the name James came from.
Why he left Paris in 1871.
Who the woman in the paintings was.
What happened in Saint-Sulpice.
Why crowds wept at his Bible.
How his last years ended.