Jacques James Joseph Tissot. 1836-1902.
En plein soleil. (In the Sunlight). 1881. Etching and drypoint. Tissot 54, Béraldi 45, Wentworth 54. 7 13/16 x 11 1/2 (sheet 11 1/4 x 15). Edition about 100. Printed on off-white laid paper.
The plate was included in A portfolio of Autograph Etchings, published by James R. Osgood and Co., Boston, 1881. Impressions of En plein soleil from this portfolio are signed in pencil and bear the artist's red stamp (Lugt 1545). A rich impression. $9,000.
Tissot used a composite of a number of photographs as the basis for this composition. Kathleen Newton in fact appears twice in the picture; in the foreground she is sitting by the closed parasol, together with her eldest child Violet (whose father had been Captain Palliser with whom she had her first affair - see no 3 in this catalogue). She is then seen again in the left background sitting on the low wall with her child George (whose father may well have been Tissot). In the background under the open parasol lies Lilian Hervey, her niece. The black cat may be a reference to Newon's nickname, "Kitty". En plein soleil portrays Kathleen Newton and her family in their sunlit garden on an idyllic English summer's day.