For an artist of Tissot’s character, so fascinated by the bustle of modern life, the railway station was irresistible. Like the scenes of ports and jetties, where travellers await the arrival of ships and ferries, the London train stations were places to which Tissot returned on several occasions for inspiration. Waiting for the Train (Willesden Junction) painted in 1871-73 (Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand) depicts a very similar scene as the present one but with a more conventional composition. Tissot seems to have been interested in the transience of platforms and docks, the anticipation of departure and arrival and the order amongst the general chaos. These subjects perhaps suggest a metaphor for the unsettled life Tissot led in the 1870s and 1880s, a refugee of the Paris Commune living in London, flouting convention to live with a woman who was not his wife. It was his beautiful mistress, Kathleen Newton who invariably occupies these pictures painted during the six years of their relationship before her death in 1882. Within these animated compositions is usually a woman, a figure of calm and poise around which the commotion swirls. Often in a central position she is the main traveller, between the comfort of home and the adventure of being away. In The Departure Platform, Victoria Station she stands quietly amid a scene of clamour and energy – men hailing hansom cabs, the roar and hiss of steam and the crack of horses’ hooves against the cobbles. Dressed in a heavy three-caped travelling-coat and veiled beneath her hat, she has a book and an umbrella tucked under her arm. The pale yellow cover of the book may mean that it is one of the 'sensational' fictions published in Britain, a distraction for her long journey. However, its thickness makes it more likely that it is a Bradshaw railway timetable, which also had characteristic yellow covers.

The setting is one of the two cab roads that ran into the centres of the parallel termini at Victoria Station for trains of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. This is a scene that is now nostalgic to modern eyes, of a golden age of steam and horse-power, but in the 1880s it was a snap-shot of modernity, of contemporary metropolitan life – recognisable, relatable and exhilarating. The audacious cropping of the scene, which recalls the work of Tissot’s friend in Paris, Degas, creates an image of dynamism and movement. A laden porter rushes off to the left, only half-seen as he exits our view and the train itself is confined to the background. Through gestures and the uses of bright red watercolour, Tissot leads the eye through the composition from the rolled-up travelling rugs and umbrellas on the trolley in the foreground to the uniform of the soldier beside the locomotive and the ruddy complexion of the gentleman hailing a cab. The horse and cab appear to be the same one depicted in Going to Business of 1879 (private collection) and Kathleen’s costume is the same in the watercolour Goodbye on the Mersey of 1881 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). Although the picture seems spontaneous, it would have been based on an amalgamation of observations both in the studio and at the station itself. Tissot’s biographer, James Laver, writing in 1936, ventured that inspiration for the picture may have been autobiographical; ‘Did Tissot at this time contemplate leaving England for ever, taking the lady with him, away from the reach of hostile tongues? If he did, he reconsidered the project, for he knew that Paris was not yet ready to receive him; there were still too many who remembered that he had been, with whatever lack of conviction, a Communard.’ (J. Laver, Vulgar Society: The Romantic Career of James Tissot, London, 1936, p. 43)

The Departure Platform, Victoria Station is a watercolour version of an oil entitled By Land (unlocated) and there were corresponding watercolour and oils entitled By Water, which formed two pairs (the watercolour By Water - Waiting at the Dockside, London was sold Christie’s, London, 11 July 2017, lot 71). In By Water, Kathleen is again surrounded by luggage and the background is of ship’s rigging and cranes hauling cargo onto the steamers. Another, later composition entitled The Cab Road, Victoria Station is known from an oil sketch dated 1895 (Christie’s, London, 13 July 2017, lot 136). This is a more manic, confused scene lacking the taught tension and anticipation of the present depiction of travel in Victorian London.

We are very grateful to Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz for her additions and amendments to this catalogue note.