Portrait of M.N.. Portrait of Mrs N..(Kathleen Newton). La Frileuse. by James J. J. Tissot, 1836-1902

James J. J. Tissot, 1836-1902
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Portrait of M.N.. Portrait of Mrs N..(Kathleen Newton). La Frileuse.

Original drypoint in black ink. 1876. Signed in pencil. Signed with the artist's red monogram stamp. Signed and dated in the plate. Edition of less than 100 impressions. From the first and only edition printed in London at Goulding's studio, 1876.
Ref: Wentworth - Tissot Prints no 26. Tissot's catalogue 2

Superb rich impression with burr on the drypoint and tonal hand-wiping of the ink. On pale cream laid japan paper. Superb condition. With margins. Sheet: 13 1/4 x 9 5/8ins.
Plate: 10 1/4 x 6 3/8ins (260x162mm).

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This is probably Tissot's greatest and most beautiful portrait of Kathleen Newton, his great and ultimately tragic love. It is a work of extreme delicacy yet great richness, of poetic quiet yet great emotion. Unlike the great majority of Tissot's prints it is worked in pure drypoint, without the strength of underlying pure etching. The use of pure drypoint allowed him to combine extremely fine touches of line, in the drawing of her face for example, with tremendously rich textures in the burr and wiped ink tone in the fur collar or the hat.

Kathleen Newton was the inspiration for some of Tissot's very finest works. Their affair was profound and passionate. She had married a surgeon Isaac Newton in India in 1871, but having confessed to a continuing liaison with a Captain Palliser they were divorced the same year. In late 1871, back in England, Kathleen had a daughter Violet by Palliser but did not continue the relationship. In 1876 she had a son, George, and it was in the same year that she started to live with Tissot. Whether Tissot was George's father is not known. However from 1876 she and Tissot shared a passionate and deeply loving life together.

Because her past was seen as disreputable by Victorian standards their life together had to be hidden from the public eye. In Tissot's large house and garden in north London they created a private world together. This private world is the atmospheric background to many of Tissot's compositions of this period (for example 'Le Croquet' - see no 7 in this catalogue). Kathleen, dressed in wonderful sumptuous garments, was also used by Tissot as the model for some of his most brilliant narrative compositions.

Kathleen had very poor health, and in 1882 she died of consumption. The title 'La Frileuse'x - a woman shivering - refers to the fact that she felt constantly cold.