.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Like Kathleen Newton at the Piano (lot 120), this picture is another celebration of family life, familiar to all London children: walking and resting in the park. Tissot relished the family life that his lover and muse, Kathleen Newton, brought with her. He had met her as they were neighbors in the enclave of St. John’s Wood, but her story was unusual to say the least. She had been born in India in 1854 where her father had worked for the East India Company. She had been educated in England after the Indian Mutiny, but was recalled at the age of 16 by her brother to enter into an arranged marriage to a widower twice her age. On the voyage out, she met and fell in love with a Captain Palliser, and although she went through with her marriage, she left her new husband within a fortnight for Palliser. On writing to her husband that she loved Palliser and was pregnant by him, Newton divorced her. She returned to England to give birth to Palliser’s child, a daughter, Violet, who was given her divorced husband’s surname, Newton. Two years later she gave birth to another child, a son, Cecil, presumably also Captain Palliser’s.
Kathleen Newton’s children lived with her sister after she had moved in with Tissot in 1877, but the two households were in regular communication and the children visited every day for tea. Walks in the park were a regular occurrence before the children were returned to the nursery they shared with their cousins. Tissot was adept at finding suitable subjects, and balanced his large scale exhibition pieces with smaller works that were tempting and suitable to the pockets of his clientele. Although not exhibited, this charming, relatable subject would have found ready admirers.
Hampton Court is on the River Thames and reached easily from central London by boat, Tissot's favorite means of travel. A larger painting by him of the subject was on the Paris market in 1902 and probably the work of that title sold by Tissot in 1883 to Paris art dealer Georges Petit. The tree-lined alley in the middle distance behind the foreground figures is the setting for Tissot's large oil, Le Petit Nemrod (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon), exhibited in 1883.
We are grateful to Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Kathleen Newton’s children lived with her sister after she had moved in with Tissot in 1877, but the two households were in regular communication and the children visited every day for tea. Walks in the park were a regular occurrence before the children were returned to the nursery they shared with their cousins. Tissot was adept at finding suitable subjects, and balanced his large scale exhibition pieces with smaller works that were tempting and suitable to the pockets of his clientele. Although not exhibited, this charming, relatable subject would have found ready admirers.
Hampton Court is on the River Thames and reached easily from central London by boat, Tissot's favorite means of travel. A larger painting by him of the subject was on the Paris market in 1902 and probably the work of that title sold by Tissot in 1883 to Paris art dealer Georges Petit. The tree-lined alley in the middle distance behind the foreground figures is the setting for Tissot's large oil, Le Petit Nemrod (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon), exhibited in 1883.
We are grateful to Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.