the life of christ

by Rupert M. Loydell

A Review of The Life of Christ, James Tissot (304pp, £39.95, Merrel)

A few weeks in to living with this book and I still don't quite know what to make of it. Like most people brought up in nonconformist churches in the 1960s, I have more of a soft spot than I usually acknowledge for Authorised Version Bible illustrations, as well as for those Victorian paintings which still tended to be hanging in the darker corners of church buildings then (Holman Hunt's The Light of the World spring to mind). I also genuinely love many Renaissance and pre-Renaissance works with biblical stories as their subjects. Only last night Sister Wendy Beckett was on prime time BBC television discussing a Fra Angelico and two other nativities in the National Gallery - it was fantastic to have them shown, even so briefly, even in reproduction, to us again.

But back to Tissot. The book contains reproductions of all the 350 watercolours which constitute the artist's version of the gospels. Having been partially exhibited in Paris, reproduced in a single bestselling gospel narrative, the completed work (ten years work!) toured America and since 1900 has been in the possession of the Brooklyn Museum. Only recently has attention been returned to this work, resulting in the publication of this beautifully produced volume with its three informative biographical and cultural essays.

But, as I said, what to make of it now, in 2009? What to make of this very literal version of Jesus' life? Some detailed scenes are frankly, plain boring, full of people and details that simply clutter the frame. Further scenes are creative interpretations of some of the stories Jesus told, but executed in an ever so unexciting and formally composed manner. Other scenes are depictions of angels and the supernatural; what to make of angels as mundane and ordinary as Tissot's? To be frank, the text of this book makes the work sound far more intriguing than it actually is! There is none of the visionary originality of, for instance Blake's religious paintings, none of the fervour and majesty of John Martin's apocalyptic art, nothing as sublime and restrained, as spiritual, as works by contemporary artists such as Agnes Martin or Craigie Aitchinson. This is at times reinforced by the examples of similar paintings on biblical subjects reproduced herein.

Truth be told, Tissot's watercolours seem merely illustrative, and reading this book reminds me of nothing as much as dipping into my Children's Bible when I was young. Tissot's paintings are as strange and distancing as those pictures remain to me, if occasionally exotic or sometimes bewildering and confusing. Whatever one believes, something as amazing as the life of Christ deserves images far more surprising, revelatory and original than these accomplished but dull works. This book is fascinating as social history, as a document of an extraordinary project, but the actual subject of the book, the work itself, remains inert and uninvolving.