Indiciphered Drawing

Indeciphered Drawing of 1890, at the Brooklyn Museum, belongs to a period of Tissot's life — following the death of Kathleen Newton in 1882 and his return to Paris — when he was deeply engaged with spiritualism and the possibility of communication with the dead. After Newton's death from tuberculosis, Tissot became convinced he had made contact with her spirit and underwent a spiritual conversion that directed him toward the illustration of the life of Christ. An 'indeciphered drawing' may suggest the ambiguous, partially legible communications he sought in spiritualist practice, or may indicate a scene in which figures struggle to read or interpret a text. The Brooklyn Museum holds a substantial collection of Tissot's work, including the major Life of Christ series, making it the most important repository of his late religious period.

Oil on canvas, the work from 1890 falls between his secular social paintings and the full immersion in biblical illustration. The technique likely bridges his earlier fluid social observation and the finer, more devotional detail of his biblical series. The subject may involve a figure with a written document, rendering the act of reading or interpretation as the central subject.