Considered in this light, we can better account for the way biography and history became intertwined so as to produce the revelatory excesses of What Our Savior Saw from the Cross and the larger watercolor series to which it belongs. PAUL PERRIN is Curator at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. KRYSTYNA MATYJASZKIEWICZ is an independent art historian and specialiston James Tissot. MARINE KISIEL is Curator at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. By granting an escape from the confines of modern living, the painting provides spiritual relief for secular maladies a mechanism of action akin to a Freudian palliative measure. BURON is Director of the Art Division at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Viewers are made to look out upon the scene of the Crucifixion through the eyes of Jesus Christ himself, with aesthetic contemplation sublimated to a level of epiphanic revelation. /rebates/2fJames-Tissot-Melissa-E-Buron2fbook2f43683067&. During his late career, the artist James Tissot became a prominent member of these movements, and his painting What Our Savior Saw from the Cross (1886-1894) mirrors their intensive religiosity.

He also painted scenes and characters from the Bible. In their search for a meaningful replacement, many citizens of the West turned to religion, and a multitude of popular Christian movements came into being. Tissots career defies categorisation and he never formally belonged to the Impressionist circle despite an invitation from Degas. PAUL PERRIN is Curator at the Musée dOrsay, Paris. KRYSTYNA MATYJASZKIEWICZ is an independent art historian and specialist on James Tissot. MARINE KISIEL is Curator at the Musée dOrsay, Paris.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the modern materialist lifestyles made possible by the Industrial Revolution were increasingly seen as existentially insufficient. BURON is Director of the Art Division at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

James Tissot by Melissa E. Buron