Cleveland Museum of Art

Seaside (July: Specimen of a Portrait)

Date

1878

Medium

oil on fabric

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This painting depicts a woman reclining upon an upholstered couch on a summer day while light filters through a partially closed awning that provides a glimpse of a beach in the background. James Tissot’s mature works from this time were more likely to convey a mood—here of a languid summer afternoon—than a specific narrative. The model for this painting was Kathleen Newton, born Kathleen Ashburnham Kelly (1854–1882), the artist’s lover from 1876 until her untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of 28. From 1869 to 1876, under the pseudonym Coïdé , James Tissot published political cartoons in the British weekly magazine Vanity Fair , causing circulation to skyrocket.

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