ABSTRACT
Jacques-Joseph Tissot, an anglophile Frenchman who was calling himself James by 1855, spent over a decade in London from summer 1871 to November 1882. The pictures he made in England are considered British and include some of the best-known and most popular Victorian images. Agnew probably commissioned Tissot to paint the replica of Dunmore’s picture that the dealer received and paid for in September 1872 as Le The. Tissot made a watercolor replica of On the River, which was among the artist’s effects at his country house—the Chateau de Buillon, near Besancon in south-east France—inherited along with his Paris house and contents by Tissot’s nephew and nieces. Many of the oils exhibited by Tissot between 1877 and 1879 at London’s new Grosvenor Gallery were replicated by the artist, often in smaller size. An interesting aspect of Tissot’s replica production is that “prime” works and their replicas were often purchased by the same dealer, suggesting these replicas were commissioned.
