Article February 8, 1900 Issue

Religious Items

The Watchman of December 14, 1899, has this to say of M. Tissot's paintings of Jesus:—

There is now on exhibition in Boston a series of over four hundred paintings, representing the main features of the life of Christ, which serve as a fresh interpretation of the Gospel narrative. If it is legitimate for Farrar, or Andrews, or Edersheim, or Geike to retell the life of Christ, it is as legitimate for a painter to set forth his conception of the story of the evangelists. Form and color may convey the divine message as truly as words.

The main facts of the life of the artist, M. James Tissot, are easily accessible, and we shall not recount them, but it is easy to believe that his work upon these pictures made him, not merely nominally but in spirit and in truth, a disciple of Christ. You feel as you study them in detail, and then, grouping your impressions, survey the whole series, that you have been following a devout guide. Munkacsy may have wrought in that spirit, but you always felt that the artistic purpose was primary with him: that with him the scene before Pilate and the Crucifixion were subjects. You hardly feel that about Tissot's work. His motive seems to be to set forth the historic facts of religion rather than to paint a striking picture.

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