Portrait of Eugène Coppens de Fontenay

Portrait of Eugène Coppens de Fontenay of 1867, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, depicts a member of the French aristocracy and illustrates Tissot's skill at the formal portrait of social distinction. By 1867 Tissot was well established in Parisian artistic circles, and portrait commissions from the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie were an important part of his practice. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds one of the great encyclopedic collections in North America, and its acquisition of this early Tissot portrait contributed to the museum's representation of nineteenth-century French painting. The formal portrait tradition within which Tissot was operating here had its roots in the grand manner of Van Dyck and the elegant precision of Ingres, both artists whose influence on French portraiture of the period is clearly traceable.

Oil on canvas, the portrait is painted with the formal confidence expected of a commissioned portrait of a man of social consequence. The sitter's dress — likely formal attire appropriate to his rank — is rendered with precision. Tissot's characteristic material attentiveness, normally exercised on women's fashion, is here applied to the more restricted vocabulary of male formal dress.