James-Jaques-Joseph Tissot

signed J. Tissot lower left

Mr. T. H. Robsjohn Gibbings, Athens (and sold, Sotheby's London, February 26, 1964, lot 76)

David S. Brooke, James Jacques Joseph Tissot 1836-1902, A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, April 6-May 5, 1968, under no. 18,
Krystyna Matyjaskiewicz, James Tissot, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, November 15, 1984-June 30, 1985, under no. 51, p. 172 (French Edition); no. 65, p. 111 (English Edition)

Paper is laid down on paper which is laid down to mat board affixed to top mat with paper hinges. Isolated pindots of foxing at upper left.
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Waiting Here is one of ten rare gouaches that Tissot made as preliminary studies for his first paintings in London in the early 1870s. The figure in this work, along with another from this series, would be used in Tissot's major canvas, Too Early, of 1873. The culture of England had an immediate impact on the artist when he left Paris and he was interested in representing the nuanced social customs of bourgeois Londoners. In the finished painting, Tissot has portrayed a group of guests who have arrived too early. He takes a humorous perspective as he shows them shuffling their feet, not knowing where to look; but there is a deeper comedy to the situation, which is that the guests, their hostess, and the guests yet to come should abide by the absurd conventions that make arriving too early so uncomfortable. As in his other paintings of the middle class at leisure, Tissot gently portrays their social life as an elaborate ceremony in which the main object is to wear the right clothes and behave correctly (Malcolm Warner, "Comic and Aesthetic: James Tissot in the Context of British Art and Taste," James Tissot, New York, 1985, p. 28). 

The gouache studies that Tissot made for these early London paintings have an immediacy and a sense of spontaneity that is sometimes missing from his finished oils. They are unique in Tissot's oeuvre and may be considered his most important drawings both in technique and aesthetic quality. While Tissot executed other drawings in his career, these were usually watercolor replicas of paintings, and tended to be small in scale and somewhat mechanical copies of the larger oils they reproduce.

Tissot's gouaches all depict single figures of women, drawn from life with an accuracy that required little more than their careful transfer to canvas. They are painted freely in loose, gestural strokes, but still articulate the details of costume and precision of posture and expression. The other studies from this series include: A Lady in a Black and White Dress for The Return from the Boating Trip; A Woman seated in a rocking chair for The Last Evening (collection of Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts); A Woman seated in a boat for Waiting (location unknown); A Woman standing holding an umbrella  for The Captain and the Mate (Collection of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford); a study for The Captain's Daughter; another study of A woman in evening dress for Too Early; Woman Asleep and A Woman seated with a lap rug (both collection of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford); and two studies for A Woman in a Shawl.

Waiting Here was sold at Sotheby's London in 1964 by Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings, one of America's most important interior decorators in the 1930s and 1940s. Operating out of an office on Madison Avenue, he was a great advocate of modern design, and championed personal taste, independent thinking and individuality through numerous magazine articles and editorials.