Jacques Joseph Tissot (; 15 October 1836 – 8 August 1902), anglicized as James Tissot (), was a French painter and illustrator. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, incorporating elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, with a focus on women's fashion and the Belle Epoque, but would also explore many Medieval, Biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. Tissot served in the Franco-Prussian War on the side of France and later the Paris Commune before moving to London in 1871, where he would find further success as an artist as well as meet Irishwoman Kathleen Newton, who came to live with him as a close companion and muse until her death in 1882. Tissot maintained close relations with the then-nascent Impressionist movement, including friend and mentee Edgar Degas. Early life Jacques Tissot was born in the city of Nantes in France and spent his early childhood there. His father, Marcel Théodore Tissot, was a successful drapery merchant. His mother, Marie Durand, assisted her husband in the family business and designed hats. A devout Catholic, Tissot's mother instilled pious devotion in the future artist from a very young age. Tissot's youth spent in Nantes likely contributed to his frequent depiction of shipping vessels and boats in his later works. The involvement of his parents in the fashion industry is believed to have been an influence on his painting style, as he depicted women's clothing in fine detail. By the time Tissot was 17, he knew he wanted to pursue painting as a career. His father opposed this, preferring his son to follow a business profession, but the young Tissot gained his mother's support for his chosen vocation. Around this time, he began using the given name of James. By 1854 he was commonly known as James Tissot; he may have adopted it because of his increasing interest in everything English. Early career In 1856 or 1857, Tissot travelled to Paris to pursue an education in art. While staying with a friend of his mother, painter Jules-Élie Delaunay, Tissot enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study in the studios of Hippolyte Flandrin and Louis Lamothe. Both were successful