Baron Aimé de la Seillière

Baron Aimé de la Seillière of 1866, at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, is a formal portrait of a prominent French banker and financier, representing Tissot's engagement with the haute bourgeoisie of the Second Empire. The Seillière banking family were among the most significant financial actors in mid-nineteenth-century France, and the Baron was a figure of considerable social weight. Tissot's portrait of him reflects both the artist's position within fashionable Parisian society and the conventions of official portrait painting that a man of this standing would expect. The Karlsruhe Kunsthalle holds an important collection of European painting, and this formal portrait by an artist known primarily for his social genre work represents a significant dimension of Tissot's early French career.

Oil on canvas, the formal portrait deploys the conventions of mid-nineteenth-century French portraiture: a clear, strong composition, careful modelling of the face in directed light, precise rendering of the formal dress appropriate to a man of high financial and social standing. Tissot's technical precision, normally exercised on women's fashion, is here applied to the authoritative simplicity of male formal attire.