Le Petit Nemrod
James Tissot·1882
Historical Context
Le Petit Nemrod of 1882, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon, depicts a child dressed as a hunter or sportsman — the title invoking the Biblical Nimrod, described in Genesis as 'a mighty hunter before the Lord.' The subject of a child playing at being a hunter has a long tradition in European art, from Flemish genre painting to Velázquez's portraits of royal children in hunting dress. Tissot, who had a strong feeling for children — partly reflecting his grief over the children he observed in his companion Kathleen Newton's household — gives the subject his characteristic attention to costume and expression. Besançon's fine arts museum holds important works collected during the prosperous years of the French Third Republic, and this Tissot is among its significant acquisitions.
Technical Analysis
Oil on canvas, the painting is likely painted with the fluid, warm technique Tissot developed in his London period and maintained after his return to Paris. A child in miniature adult hunting dress provides compositional material in which the gap between the adult clothing and the child's body is itself a source of meaning and charm.
Look Closer
- ◆The gap between the grandeur of the hunter's equipment and the smallness of the child wearing it is the image's primary visual and emotional irony.
- ◆Tissot renders the child's expression with care — whether the child takes the role seriously or plays at it is the key psychological question.
- ◆The hunting equipment and dress are painted with the same material precision Tissot applied throughout his career to adult clothing.
- ◆The Biblical title — Nimrod as the type of the great hunter — elevates the child's play into an engagement with a long cultural tradition.
