French society painter.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

Where the French impressionists painted for art, James Tissot (1836-1902) {‘tea-sow’) painted for a living. While defying easy characterization, ‘society painter’, with all its attendant pejoratives, comes close.

Tissot was much more than a hack painting for shekels from the rich. He was very much his own man and, while friendly with many of the impressionists, he made it a point not to exhibit with these cultural rabble rousers.

He painted the rich, but at a skill level denied the common or garden society dauber. Gaze at the detail and rendering of the beautiful women’s clothing of La Belle Époque and you will see this is no ordinary artist. Nor are his compositions anything but perfect, the space used well, the dynamics preserved.

Dynamic composition. Portsmouth, 1877.

Attention to detail. 1878.

Witty and enchanting.

The pug came too. 1870.

These competing suitors are more than aware of the wealth of their surroundings.

Vacation snap – the sort of thing the Kodak Brownie replaced, poorly.

Tissot was an avowed Anglophile for which he can be forgiven. His work with its charm and lightness could only ever be French. At least the man had the good sense to settle down in St. John’s Wood, close to Lord’s, the home of cricket. James Tissot had a photographer’s eye at a time when photograhy was yet to emerge as the modern illustrator’s medium of choice.

For a modern image (mine!) in the decorative style of Tissot, click here.

If the period women’s clothing is of interest, the key designer of the era was Paul Poiret.

If you want to see how mediocre even the best photography is when it comes to portraying the rich, click here.

Art Deco illustrator.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

George Barbier (1882-1932) died young, just as the Great Depression started to roar. That’s somewhat appropriate as his delicate Art Deco illustrations are frequently about flappers and society people of the 1920s, the newly rich who saw no end to stock market gains. They had disappeared by the time of his death.

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,” quoth the famous economist Irving Fisher in early October, 1929. Proving that you should never take investing advice from an economist, Black Thursday, October 24, saw the market drop by 11 percent, followed four days later by Black Monday, when it fell another 13 percent; and the next day, Black Tuesday, when it lost 12 percent more. Good market timing, Irving.

Sounds just like today when stocks are overvalued by 50% as the market continues in denial about 40 million unemployed – and largely unemployable – American workers. Today we are waiting for the pandemic to ‘magically disappear’ courtesy of the moron in the Oval Office. Nothing changes.

Here are some favorite Barbier images from the Roaring Twenties, ones no photographer could ever equal:

The Roaring Twenties and its denizens.

Exquisite use of line.

Before the days of sardine cans masquerading as transportation.

Simple charm and great sophistication. Hitchcock appropriated
the firework background in ‘To Catch a Thief‘.

Like Dufy and Gruau after him (see the previous two posts here) Barbier’s work was always in demand.

If you are interested in learning more about the gorgeous bias cut dresses frequently draped so elegantly on Barbier’s women, check out Madeleine Vionnet.