Details — Click to read
Literature regarding this artwork: Victor Arwas, Belle Epoque Posters & Graphics, Rizzoli, New York, 1978, p. 20 (ill.);
Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, James Tissot, Phaidon Press & Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1984, no. 104, p. 119 (ill.);
“L’Été” is another of Tissot’s studies of Kathleen Newton in the role of a “season.” It is the most strongly japoniste of Tissot’s portrait studies of her. The parasol gives an immediate oriental feel, but it is the manner in which the composition is treated which shows Tissot’s Japan-influenced modernism; the very close viewpoint to the figure and the cut-off forms emphasize the realist immediacy of the composition in just the same way as is found in portraits by Manet, who was a long-time friend of Tissot’s.
