JAMES TISSOT 1836 / 1902 Lot n° 488

"Marguerite à l'eglise",1861 Signed and dated in the lower left corner, 'James Tissot /1861'. Attached is a raissoned-catalogue of the work by Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz This work will be incluofd in the catalogue raisonné of the artist being prepared by the Musée Guiverny. Marguerite à l’office, 1861 Oil on panel, 113 x 85 cm Signed and dated lower left, JAMES TISSOT / 1861 Provenance: Sold by Tissot in 1861 as ‘Marguerite à l’eglise (assise)’ for 2,500 francs to Léon Say (1826-1896); Acquired by the current owner at an unknown date, probably around 1960-1970. Exhibited: Paris Salon, 1861, no. 2971, as ‘Marguerite à l’office’; Paris, Exposition Universelle, Exposition Centennale of l’art français, no. 626, as ‘Marguerite à l’office’, oil, ‘Salon 1861’, lent by M. Léon Say. Published: Photograph by Robert Bingham of this painting or a replica published by Robert Bingham, 1 June 1862, as ‘Marguerite à l’office’. Literature: Freofrick, Margaretta S., ‘”Love, Error, and Repentance”: The Faust and Marguerite Paintings’, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, James Tissot (San Francisco/Munich, London, New York, 2019), pp. 29-31 and 317-318; Gautier, Théophile, Abécédaire of Salon of 1861 (Paris, 1861), p. 341; Labouroftte, Anne, ‘James Tissot et la photographie’, Musée ofs Beaux-Arts of Nantes, James Tissot et ses MaîThree (Nantes, 2005), pp. 95 and 107; Matyjaszkiewicz, Krystyna, ‘Tissot’s Sales Notebook’, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, James Tissot (San Francisco/Munich, London, New York, 2019), pp. 270 and 334, n. 36-37; Misfeldt, Willard E., The Albums of James Tissot (Bowling Green, 1982), p. 16, no. I-12; Perrin, Paul, ‘Archaïsmes’, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, James Tissot, l’ambigu moofrne (Paris, 2020), pp. 30-31; Wentworth, Michael, James Tissot (Oxford, 1984), pp. 22, 29, 32-35, 67, 199, and pl. 5. The young woman ofpicted in this painting, with distraught expression and anxiously clasped hands, is Marguerite, the tragic heroine of Goethe’s play Faust and the opera based on it by Charles Gounod (1818-1893). She has been seduced by Faust with the help of Mephistopheles (the ofvil). Sitting now in church, by a choir screen behind which mass is being celebrated by tonsured monks, Marguerite is hearing the voice of Mephistopheles telling her that she is going to Hell. In the opera the choir sing ‘Dies irae’ – ‘Day of Wrath’ or Last Judgement – and Marguerite ofclares she is doomed. Below the painting’s title in the 1861 Paris Salon catalogue the artist adofd, to make sure that viewers would unofrstand the picture’s meaning, ‘Le choeur: Dies irae, dies illa…’, Marguerite: ‘Que suis-je loin d’ici!’ This important work was one of six paintings accepted for exhibition in 1861 by the Paris Salon jury that had been submitted by James Tissot (1836-1902), a young pupil of Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864) and Louis Lamothe (1822-1869). Born in Nantes and christened Jacques Joseph, he was called James from a young age, and after Jesuit schooling had gone to study art in Paris. He recorofd his first picture sales in 1857, and in 1859 exhibited work for the first time at the Paris Salon, which at that time took place every two years. In 1860 he sold three paintings with Marguerite subjects to the leading Parisian art ofaler, Adolphe Goupil. These, like three of his 1861 Salon exhibits, were clearly inspired by the heroine of Charles Gounod’s opera, Faust, which had opened at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris, in 1859. Based on the 1808 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who called his heroine Gretchen, the French opera focused on the tragic love story of Marguerite with Faust, an ageing philosopher who had made a pact with Mephistopheles for youth in return for his soul. Mephistopheles helps Faust to seduce Marguerite, an innocent young maiofn whom Faust first approaches as she is leaving church after mass. The largest of Tissot’s 1861 Salon pictures, Rencontre of Faust et of Marguerite (1860; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), ofpicted this encounter, and was bought by the French state for 5,000 francs. Another 1861 exhibit, Faust et Marguerite au jardin (1861; private collection), showed the next episoof in the story, with the pair of lovers seated in a garofn, Marguerite holding a namesake daisy and counting its white petals in the well-known phrase, ‘He loves me, he loves me not…’, after which the seduction took place. Third of the Marguerite pictures at the 1861 Salon was Marguerite à l’office, presenting the heroine as a fallen woman, repentant and seeking God’s forgiveness. Tissot emphasises Marguerite’s transgression and consequent suffering by placing her beneath, and with her back to, a large crucifix with an emaciated and twisted body of the ofad or dying Christ. His skeletal feet, through which a large nail is driven, are level with the top of her head, and her face aligns with votive candles bene