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(Nantes 1836-1902 Doubs)

The graceful woman, swiftly portrayed here with a brush on a piece of cardboard previously prepared with broad brushstrokes, was Tissot’s mistress Kathleen Newton (1854-1882). Although married to someone else, she shared her life with him for a number of years until her early death. His favourite model, she figures in his oeuvre in numerous guises. In an etching of 1880 she personifies Winter; her hands, as in this sketch, in a fur muff, are in keeping with the iconography popular since the sixteenth century. It is clear that Kathleen Newton must have been a delicate figure.