Currently not on view
Les deux amis (The Two Friends),
1881
James Tissot, French, 1836–1902
2012-57
A close friend of Degas and Whistler, the French painter and printmaker James Tissot moved to England in 1871 and over the next ten years built a successful career as a painter of society portraits and genre scenes, returning permanently to Paris in 1881. The composition of Les deux amis hinges on the clasped hands of the man on the ship and the man on the dock—the only bond uniting friends who will presumably soon be divided. The labeled freight, as well as the two small flags in the lower margin, alludes to the animosity that arose between the United States and England when the Confederate States commissioned a Liverpool shipyard to build the notorious warship Alabama during the American Civil War. Those tensions now over, Les deux amis speaks to the alliance between the two nations as well as to personal friendship.
Information
Title
Les deux amis (The Two Friends)
Dates
1881
Maker
Medium
Etching and drypoint with watercolor additions
Dimensions
plate: 58.6 x 26 cm. (23 1/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
sheet: 65.2 x 42 cm. (25 11/16 x 16 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
Object Number
2012-57
Place Made
Europe, France
Inscription
Signed and dated in plate at lower right in title margin: J.J. Tissot / 1881
Marks/Labels/Seals
Remarques of American and British flags inscribed at left and right in title margin, with watercolor additions
Reference Numbers
Béraldi 132.46; Wentworth 55
Materials
Techniques
Subject
-
Henri Béraldi, "Volume 12," Les graveurs du XIXe siècle (Paris: L. Conquet, 1892).
, nos. 48–52, p. 132 - Michael Justin Wentworth, James Tissot: catalogue raisonné of his prints, (Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1978)., nos. 57–61
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2012," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 71/72 (2012-13): p. 105-132., p. 116
