Le départ de l'enfant prodigue
James Tissot·1863
Historical Context
Le Départ de l'Enfant Prodigue of 1863, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, is one of a pair of paintings Tissot made illustrating the Parable of the Prodigal Son, depicting the moment of the son's departure — leaving his father's house to seek his fortune and pleasure in the world. The parable was one of the most frequently illustrated in European religious painting, and Tissot approached it early in his career as a young painter demonstrating his range and ambition. The choice of a medieval setting — following the Flemish and Flemish-influenced tradition of placing Biblical parables in contemporary or recent-historical environments — reflects the historical genre interests Tissot had developed alongside his contemporaries in the early 1860s. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris holds this work as part of its collection of nineteenth-century French painting.
Technical Analysis
Oil on canvas, the painting shows the medievalising tendency of Tissot's early career, with elaborate historical costume and architectural detail rendered in the precise, highly finished manner of mid-nineteenth-century historical genre painting. The figure of the departing son and the surrounding farewell scene are arranged with compositional care.
Look Closer
- ◆The medieval setting transforms the Biblical parable into a European historical scene, following the Flemish tradition of parable illustration.
- ◆The son's departing figure carries the narrative's future — we know the subsequent suffering implied by this apparently joyful departure.
- ◆The father's farewell posture and expression contain the story's emotional complexity: love that lets go, grief that does not yet know itself.
- ◆Tissot's detailed historical costume reflects his early interest in historical genre painting before his turn to contemporary social subjects.
