The Convalescent

Accession Number
2004/2.163

Title
The Convalescent

Artist(s)
James Jacques Joseph Tissot

Artist Nationality
French (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
1875

Medium & Support
etching and drypoint on paper

Dimensions
8 3/4 in x 6 7/16 in (22.23 cm x 16.35 cm);13 15/16 in x 9 15/16 in (35.4 cm x 25.24 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Aldrich

Subject matter
This is the first print that Tissot published and, unlike many of his other prints, no related painting is known. He would go on to exhibit the print somewhat regularly over the course of his career. The subject is loosely generic, as indicated by the title; this is not meant to be a specific woman (that is, a portrait), but rather, a woman who we might think of as a character in a narrative in which a well-off young woman recovers from illness.

Physical Description
A woman wearing a black hat reclines in a lightly sketched chair. Shown in a three-quarter view and angled towards the viewer's left, she sits quietly, looking straight ahead. She wears a fur-trimmed coat, and flexes her right hand, which is curled into a loose fist, upwards. The background is left blank.
Signed in the lower left of the composition, in the plate, "JTJ [the second J rendered backwards] / J.J. tissot"

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
intaglio print

Collection Area
Western

Rights
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Keywords
costume (mode of fashion)
drypoint (printing process)
etching (printing process)
fur stoles
genre (visual works)
hats
ill (people)
illness
original prints
women (female humans)

2 Related Resources

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Associated Artists
(Part of: Artist Associations and Art Movements)
Sickness and Suffering
(Part of: History of Medicine - American Association of Historians of Medicine (AAHM))

& Author Notes

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