Gathering of the Manna

In his final decades Tissot underwent a profound religious conversion and devoted himself entirely to illustrating the Bible in a painstaking, documentary manner. He spent years in Palestine sketching landscapes, costumes, and architecture, then returned to Paris to produce hundreds of gouaches depicting Old and New Testament scenes with the same concern for material detail he had once applied to London society. The Gathering of the Manna, completed around 1899, belongs to this Old Testament series. Tissot's approach was radical for its time: rather than relying on conventional Renaissance or Baroque iconography, he sought archaeological and ethnographic accuracy, depicting figures in costume drawn from Near Eastern sources. The series was exhibited to great popular acclaim and subsequently toured internationally.

Tissot executed his Bible illustrations primarily in gouache on board, achieving opaque, luminous colour fields quite different from the oil glazes of his earlier work. The figures are disposed across a wide horizontal frieze, their gestures coordinated to suggest communal wonder and reverent gathering.