(Nantes, France, 1836 - 1902, Bouillon, France)
1880
Drypoint and Etching on paper
22 x 10 1/2 in. (55.9 x 26.7 cm)
Collection of the Akron Art Museum
Source Unknown
1948.336
Kathleen Newton, Tissot's British mistress, is shown here as the personification of winter. Using female figures to represent the seasons or months of the year was a device popular among French and British artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A skilled printmaker as well as painter, Tissot used the drypoint engraving technique-in which grooves carved into the metal printing plate are not smoothed out and thus deposit thicker, slightly blurred lines of ink onto the paper-to render Newton's sumptuous fur collar.