Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
The Ball on Shipboard
James Tissot · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- James Tissot (1836–1902)
- Date
- c. 1874
- Dimensions
- 84.1 x 129.5 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom
The Ball on Shipboard shows an elegant afternoon party on the deck of a ship, decorated with flags of many nations. Fashionably dressed women in striped and frilled gowns chat, stroll and sit in groups, while a few naval officers and gentlemen mingle among them.
A closer look
The scene is probably set during Cowes Week, the annual regatta on the Isle of Wight, a high point of the English social season. Tissot, a Frenchman living in London, delighted in painting the fashions of the day with great precision: the dresses, bonnets and parasols are rendered in loving detail. Yet the picture has a strange coolness: no one seems truly to enjoy themselves, and some critics saw in the women's similar faces and costumes a hint of the artificiality of high society. The colourful flags create a festive canopy above the crowded deck.
More by James Tissot
Famous works elsewhere
- The Shop Girl 1883
- Le Cercle de la rue Royale 1868
- What Our Lord Saw from the Cross 1890
- October 1877