NEW HAVEN, CONN. – Gifted, inventive, keenly observant and urbane, James Tissot brought high intelligence, irreverence and a wry sense of humor to his memorable depictions of social life in Victorian England. As an outsider – he came to London from his native France as a mature painter – he was able to offer fresh insights into the fashions, mores, vanities and complexities of modern British society.

Even though his work was often criticized as vulgar, overly suggestive and "too French," Tissot prospered in England. As Malcolm Warner, senior curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art puts it, the English "…suspected that, with all his wit and painterly facility, this clever foreigner might be teasing them, subtly toying with Victorian codes of respectability – and they may well have been right."

Tissot’s vignettes of fashion, society and interactions between the sexes in London – and Paris – form the nucleus of a fascinating exhibition, "James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love," on view at the Yale Center through November 28. Featuring over 40 paintings, 40 prints and 20 watercolors, this splendid retrospective provides examples of all facets of the artist’s career and solidifies his return to popular and scholarly favor after years of unwarranted neglect.

Co-organized by the Yale Center and the American Federation of Arts, the exhibition is accompanied by a fine catalogue, written by Warner and Tissot scholar Nancy Marshall, and fully illustrated. After closing in New Haven, the show travels to the Musee du Quebec, Canada (December 15 to March 12, 2000) and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. (March 25 to July 2, 2000).

This is a beautiful, intriguing and evocative display of fine art that should not be missed by those who appreciate outstanding painting and/or are drawn to the spectacle of late Nineteenth Century England and France. With depictions ranging from glittering balls to festive picnics, from crowded harbor and street scenes to intimate interior views to the pious biblical illustrations that culminated his career, Tissot’s art offers tantalizing evocations of the mores and activities of a bygone time.

"Above all," Warner points out, "Tissot deals with the manners and customs of modern love: the drama of attraction and flirtation, body language and eye contact, the signs of availability, the many degrees of prostitution, the workings of passion, its frustrations, rivalries and cross purposes, the sorrow of separation and loss – all of these in the particular forms they took in Paris and London in the later Nineteenth Century.

Born in Nantes as Jacques Joseph Tissot, the son of a successful merchant, the future artist thought of becoming an architect before settling on a career as a painter. Moving to Paris in the late 1850s, Tissot (1836-1902) gained quick acceptance of his work at the prestigious annual Paris Salons. His early works, influenced by early Italian paintings, were largely genre scenes and images drawn from literature and religion, often set in the Middle Ages.

While he received some academic art training, much of his aesthetic education came from contacts with a circle of avant-garde artists and writers in Paris, including Edouard Degas, Ernest Messonier, Alfred Stevens and American expatriate James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Influenced by poet/critic Charles Beaudelaire, these up-and-coming artists shunned paintings of history, mythology and religion in favor of depictions of the everyday world around them. Their portrayals of contemporary social life and fashion set the tone for Tissot – and a generation of French artists, and many Americans as well.

Tissot’s self-portrait of about 1865 shows a serious, somewhat wary man in his late twenties, in an unusual, sketchy composition. With his hand to his head, the ambitious artist appears to suggest that his early successes are only the beginning of good things to come. This image seems to reflect the influence of the style of his friend Degas.

Tissot found many subjects for his art from his observations of contemporary street/boulevard life around Paris. As a fashionable man about town, he gained firsthand glimpses into both the legitimate and illicit entertainments that had become favored themes among avant-garde artists. Through his friend Whistler, Tissot was also exposed to Japanese art and objects, which were all the rage at the time in the City of Light. Tissot soon incorporated motifs from Japanese prints, particularly tilted perspectives, flattened spaces and asymmetrical compositions, into his work.

His skillful blend of styles attracted numerous patrons. By the late 1860s the young man from Nantes was earning a handsome income and had built a substantial home in the fashionable Bois de Bologne section of Paris.

During the unrest that followed the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and the establishment of the Third Republic, Tissot was apparently suspected of being involved in the Paris Commune, the short-lived government set up by socialist activists. Forced to give up his successful career in Paris, he moved to London, where he soon resurrected his reputation and found patrons for his art. Thriving as an outsider artist, he purchased a grand house in the London suburb of St. John’s Wood, and acquired a new group of artist friends, numbering among them Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Albert Moore and John Everett Millais.

Although he came to specialize in portraits of women, Tissot created some interesting male likenesses. His early depiction of "Captain Frederick Burnaby" (1807) is a striking, informal portrayal of a celebrated strong man and hot-air balloonist, a member of the elite Royal Horse Guards. The lounging pose and decorative surroundings, including armor, fabrics and a world map, suggest a man of accomplishment and importance. Burnaby comes across on Tissot’s canvas as the epitome of relaxed elegance, which was likely the quality sought by his friend, who commissioned the portrait.

One of the first paintings Tissot produced after relocating to London, "Les Adieux (The Farewells)" (1871), is filled with the kind of symbolic details that appealed to Victorian sensibilities. Showing a poignant parting, through an iron fence, of a lower middle-class young woman and her dandified male friend, its message of loss and parting was easily recognizable to contemporary observers. Much admired when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy, this painting helped launch Tissot in England.

From the outset of his sojourn in Britain, which lasted from 1871 to 1882, Tissot sought to capture the complex, often vexing aspects of contemporary relations between the sexes – the "modern love" of the exhibition’s title. Placed in well-known English settings such as the streets of London, the Thames and seaside resort towns, these vignettes frequently featured flirtations among couples or between the viewer and the woman or women portrayed on canvas. Tissot’s sexually charged interactions were often infused with hints of trouble – indifference, immorality, rivalries or impending separations. So there is an intriguing edge to many of these beautifully painted scenes, roiling their otherwise picturesque narratives.

Tissot’s interest in women’s fashions and the exquisite, colorful ways in which he rendered them, is a distinctive feature of his own oeuvre. Implementing his fascination with femininity and its accoutrements, he reveled in painting trendy outfits that suggested the wearers were social-climbing members of newly-moneyed classes. Although some called his pictures "vulgar," they were avidly purchased in Britain.

A highlight of the Yale Center display is Tissot’s lush, expansive view of "The Ball on Shipboard" (circa 1874), depicting a gala event that was part of the annual sailing regatta off the Isle of Wight. Overflowing with unattached, gaily-dressed women, several in identical gowns, it suggests numerous possibilities for amorous activity. Yet Tissot, ever the detached observer, underscores the blasé, even bored, attitude of many of the participants, while delineating the efforts of the women to appear chic.

This clever, quirky and colorful commentary on contemporary British society was panned by critics when exhibited at the Royal Academy, but was snapped up by Agnew’s, the foremost dealer in modern British art. A marvelous, compelling composition, infused with grand colors and telling details that linger on in a viewer’s memory, this show-stopper is now in the collection of London’s Tate Gallery.

Another elegant, enigmatic vignette is "London Visitors" (1874), depicting a well-dressed couple emerging from the National Gallery in London and deciding what to do next. With the clock on the steeple of St. Martin-in-the-Fields behind them reading 10:35 in the morning, one can surmise that the tour of the gallery was rather short. Bluecoat Boys – informal guides from Christ’s Hospital – appear in the foreground and background.

While the man consults his guidebook, the woman gazes at the viewer as she points toward Trafalgar Square. "Her gesture with the umbrella may be an invitation to meet her later, secretly, in the square… [S]he seems little interested in the tour plans of the man she is with," whoever he may be, speculates curator Warner. He suggests that the overall gray tone of this large canvas (measuring 63 by 45 inches) was "intended…as a wry observation on the British weather, the general grayness that the visitors to London has to expect there."

Another crowd-pleaser, "The Thames" (circa 1876), combines two favorite Tissot themes; a setting on water and a single man with a pair of attractive young women. Depicting a sailor with two unescorted lady friends on a pleasure trip through the busy and polluted Pool of London dockyards, with a picnic hamper and bottles of champagne at their feet, this was considered an overly "fast" image by British critics. Some thought showing unchaperoned women in such a situation was "More French… than English…," adding to the chorus of condemnation. To today’s viewers it is simply a grand picture in a wonderfully evocative place.

Tissot’s pictures reflected his desire to win favor with wealthy patrons and to establish an elevated position for himself in British society. By depicting glamorous balls, lush garden parties and people enjoying tiny seaside resorts – and the social codes that surrounded them – he sought to suggest that he was at home with the English elite. His unusual emphasis on etiquette, elegant accessories and interior decor, showed he could get such things right and in precise detail.

Gardens, repositories of important social and aesthetic meanings for Victorian England, play major roles in Tissot’s art. He used his own carefully laid out garden in St. Johns Wood as the location for numerous canvases. Replete with a pool and iron colonnade, it served as the backdrop for paintings such as "Holyday" (circa 1877), a festive scene featuring interactions among several couples.

The artist’s garden also served as the setting for "Croquet" (circa 1878), featuring three young girls pausing in a desultory game of croquet, the newly-popular amusement among the leisured classes in England. The brilliant sunshine on the verdant lawn in the canvas suggests Tissot’s familiarity with Impressionist techniques.

Between 1877 and 1882 Tissot frequently depicted his beloved Irish mistress, Kathleen Irene Kelly Newton, a comely lass 18 years his junior. Divorced at age 17, she had a daughter by a previous lover and a son "in all likelihood by Tissot," according to Warner. After she moved into Tissot’s villa in London, the couple lived a relatively private life, undoubtedly to avoid public criticism. As part of this withdrawal from the larger world, Tissot focused on portraying his attractive mistress in their elegant home and well-tended garden.

A surprise highlight of the current exhibition is "The Hammock" (1878-79), making its first public appearance in 120 years. Long thought lost, it surfaced this spring at a Sotheby’s auction, and was loaned to the show by its purchaser, a Greenwich collector. (Some 60 European paintings from the same private collection are featured in "Elegance and Opulence: Art of the Gilded Age," on view at the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science through December 5. Featuring excellent paintings by the likes of Alma-Tadema, Bouguereau, Gérôme, Lord Leighton and Tissot, it is an eye-popping display and a fine complement to the New Haven exhibition. Don’t miss it.)

"The Hammock," a 50 by 30-inch masterpiece set in Tissot’s garden, shows Newton lounging in a hammock reading the newspaper, with the familiar pool and colonnade in the background. Presenting his private grounds "as a place of luxury, languor and love," Tissot depicted his mistress here as "a modern-day Eve," says Warner. " ‘The Hammock’," he observes, "celebrates the pleasures of beauty and idleness, spiced with touches of the erotic and the exotic."

Contemporary critics promptly condemned the painting as an indecorous image unworthy of such an elaborate canvas. They attacked Tissot’s departure from the traditional genre of storytelling in favor of an unconventional, even immoral, theme. "[T]he critical resistance that marked its reception signals the beginning of the end of his popularity in England," says Tissot expert Michael Wentworth. "Tissot’s lavish record of the earthly paradise he had created for his mistress put him on a collision course with the English public."

To viewers today, unencumbered by moral considerations, this grand canvas comes across as a knockout picture. The superb brushwork, evocative setting, gorgeous colors and touches inspired by Japanese art, such as the parasol, make this a truly memorable addition to the exhibition.

Tissot taught himself to etch so that he could reproduce his own works rather than to sell his rights to other engravers. One of the most striking examples of his fluid, highly finished style is "A Winter’s Walk" (1880), depicting the handsome Newton wearing a large fur collar and muff before a snowy backdrop. This image suggests why, in his lifetime, Tissot’s etchings were more consistently admired than his paintings.

Newton’s death from tuberculosis in 1882 at the age of 28 devastated Tissot, who immediately left London for Paris. Seeking to reclaim his place in the French art world, he reintroduced himself to his countrymen with an ambitious series of 15 pictures entitled "La Femme à Paris." Celebrating the popular notion that the women of the French capital were a special breed, modern and attractive females who personified the city itself, these images allowed Tissot to present himself as a true Parisian, still an insider after years abroad.

Bold, sometimes provocative and beautifully painted, these are among the most interesting works in the current show. They include "L’Ambitieuse (Political Woman)" (1883-85), showing a slim young woman in a showy pink gown entering a ballroom on the arm of a white-haired man. Several men in the foreground wink and whisper about this odd couple.

In "La Demoiselle de magasin (The ‘Young Lady’ of the Shop)" (1883-85), one attractive, presumably available, shop girl gazes boldly at the viewer as she opens the exit door, while another is the object of the leer of a man outside the shop window. It is a delicious glimpse into the vibrant commercial atmosphere of late Nineteenth Century Paris – and its smartly-dressed, desirable women.

Tissot’s love of colorful fabric and his ability to paint it glowingly is showcased in "La Demoiselle d’honneur (The Bridesmaid)" (1883-85), in which a bridesmaid in a stylish, brilliant blue dress is the focus of many eyes as she enters a carriage on a crowded Paris street. The viewer is left to ponder what may be afoot between the comely young woman and the groomsman sheltering her from the rain – or perhaps another man waiting inside the carriage.

"Ces dames des chars (The Ladies of the Cars)" (1885), an etching based on a painting, features three exotically-garbed women - so-called "Amazons" – racing horse-drawn chariots around an indoor ring at the Hippodrome, a popular Parisian entertainment site. Combining modernity and glamour, these performers epitomized the spectacular leisure-time activities available in the City of Light.

After Newton’s death, Tissot became interested in spiritualism and participated in seances in which he believed he succeeded in communicating with his late lover’s spirit. By the mid 1880s he had embraced more traditional forms of religion and began to devote his artistic energies to projects illustrating the Bible.

Prints of his paintings of the saga of "The Prodigal Son in Modern Life" (1881) were widely disseminated and much admired.

"In Foreign Climes" showed the errant offspring wasting his fortune in a Japanese teahouse, a highly dissolute activity by Victorian standards. It is a deftly-wrought image.

In his religious pictures Tissot sought to create views true to the way things appeared in biblical times, rather than idealized or modernized interpretations. In pursuit of archaeological and topographical authenticity he made three visits to the Holy Land.

In 1895 Tissot exhibited in Paris a complete set of 365 New Testament subjects, followed, in 1906, by 95 based on Old Testament themes. These popularly-acclaimed illustrations, reproduced in various English and French editions, were what he was best known for when he died. Over the years they have been much respected by Hollywood filmmakers for their accuracy; the ark of the tabernacle in Raiders of the Lost Ark was modeled on Tissot’s reconstruction.

On the final page of his illustrated New Testament, Tissot offered a strange "Portrait of a Pilgrim (Self Portrait)," a small gouache showing himself wearing a pillbox cap and raising his hand in blessing, amidst an odd assortment of objects of worship that may have come from his personal shrine. Picturing implements for his deathbed and funeral rites, the white-haired artist, then in his late 50s, suggested that his end might be near. In fact, he lived another eight years, dying in 1902 with his Old Testament project uncompleted. The series was finished by assistants, partially after Tissot’s designs. The complete set of Old Testament watercolors appeared in Paris in 1903.

In part because he was an outsider in both the French and British art worlds and his work is not easily categorized with mainstream Impressionism or post-Impressionism, Tissot’s art dropped out of the limelight following his death and was largely overlooked by art historians. In recent years there has been a renewal of appreciation for the grand skills, keen eye and humor he brought to his observations of the late Nineteenth Century society on both sides of the English Channel. His oeuvre is increasingly recognized as more complex, experimental and challenging than previously thought. By zeroing in on the complex relations between the sexes in the Victorian age and rendering narrative canvases in exquisite detail, he offered valuable insights into a still-fascinating era.

The current exhibition and catalogue should cement Tissot’s enhanced standing in art history. The value of his paintings, which already command enormous prices, will undoubtedly increase.

Kudos to all responsible for presenting this appealing, evocative and aesthetically pleasing exhibition. There will not be a more beautiful display of paintings in this country this year.

The Yale Center for British Art, boasting the most comprehensive collection of English art outside the United Kingdom – most of it donated by legendary philanthropist Paul Mellon – is housed in the final building designed by Louis I Kahn. It is located at 1080 Chapel Street at the corner of High Street; telephone 203/432-2800.

The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science is at One Museum Drive in Greenwich; telephone 203/869-0376.