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Aug. 8 marks the 122nd anniversary of the death of painter and illustrator James Tissot. Best known for his work as an illustrator of fashion and contemporary life in France and England in the second half of the 19th century, he moved on to Biblical scenes later in life. In just a few years, 1896-1902, he generated a large body of work — hundreds of watercolors that represented characters and scenes from the Hebrew and Christian bibles with a vibrant mix of realism and romanticism and a keen eye for fabric and detail.

Incredibly, the Hebrew Bible paintings sat forgotten in a storeroom at the Jewish Museum in New York for decades. Katherine Danalakis, assistant director of collections at the museum, explained why in a 2020 essay. 

After the artist died in 1902, the American Tissot Society owned the paintings which, “due to the society’s financial difficulties, had to be put up for auction in 1909,” she wrote. The artwork was purchased by a wealthy Jewish collector, Jacob H. Schiff, who gave the series to the New York Public Library. The library displayed them for a while but then placed them in storage. Eventually, they made their way into the Jewish Museum’s collection but remained in storage there too until the mid-1970s.

One of J.’s readers wrote to us recently to ask why we so often print his work with our weekly Torah column, which is written by a rotation of local rabbis and which I edit. It’s also my job to find art to accompany each one. For years, Tissot has been my favorite artist to use with the Torah column. Allow me to explain.

One consideration is that we must find art in the public domain, meaning that J. can reprint it for free. Luckily, there are centuries’ worth of public domain artworks depicting Biblical scenes from which to choose. Less luckily, almost all of them are Christian in origin, as we Jews have often been squeamish about literal visual representations of Biblical figures. 

Still, you will rarely find us illustrating a column about a Moses-heavy Torah portion with a Renaissance painting of him with horns or rays of light emanating from his head, a motif in Christian images of Moses born from a misreading of an ambiguous passage in Exodus. Or when a column references the Akeidah, or binding of Isaac, I prefer not to use art that depicts a Christian-style angel with a cherubic countenance and feathered wings staying Abraham’s hand as he attempts to sacrifice his son.

Though Tissot was a Catholic, his work always feels different to me. Born in 1836 in Nantes, France, Tissot was the son of a drapery merchant. His father’s profession is visible in the incredible detail of the textiles and clothing in his work. And to my eye, his Biblical paintings are very much of their time and place, influenced by Orientalism, Impressionism and new archaeological and anthropological discoveries from Egypt and the Ancient Near East that fascinated Europeans of his day.

Though his art comes from the imagination of a Christian living in a Christian society, his illustrations of the Hebrew Bible do have a Jew-ish quality. 

We Jews talk often of the imperfections of Noah, Abraham, Moses and the rest. Likewise, Tissot’s lavish watercolors are images of real, flawed humans, not holy, sainted heroes. Noah, in one image, is a wild-haired old man lost in thought, presumably pondering the gargantuan task of building his ark.

Tissot illustrates these people in the full scope of their lives, depicting older and younger versions of them with striking differences.

In “Miriam Shut Out From the Camp,” an illustration of the incident in which Moses’ sister is afflicted with a skin disease, she is a weathered old woman sitting against a mud brick structure, using her hands to shield her eyes from the sun. But in an earlier scene — “the women dancing with timbrels follow Miriam,” as the Debbie Friedman song goes — he created an image of young women full of unbridled joy.

At Tissot’s Burning Bush, Moses is a scrawny, disheveled desert shepherd, crouching before a sight he can’t understand. And at the end of his life, Moses is an elder in an elegant robe, standing with his back to the viewer, gazing longingly at a holy land he will never enter. 

Tissot, however, did visit that land. 

“He made one of many trips to Palestine in 1896 to draw inspiration, observing the landscape where the biblical stories took place and producing what he felt were historically accurate illustrations,” wrote Danalakis in the Jewish Museum essay.

It’s hard to judge how truly realistic the work is, but the landscapes are certainly recognizable to those of us who have visited Israel. Some also seem to draw direct inspiration from archaeological finds of the time, such as the Egyptian frescos that clearly influence his renderings of the pharaoh of Exodus.

Though he’s hardly a household name, Tissot had a marked influence on the way we picture the Bible in modern pop culture. Consider this: “Tissot’s illustrations of the Hebrew Bible gained new attention in 1982 when the Jewish Museum exhibited around 160 of the watercolors,” according to Danalakis. “It is no coincidence that Tissot’s ark was used as a model for the set of [Steven] Spielberg’s ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ which was released around the same time.”

Today, all 368 of Tissot’s Hebrew Bible paintings reside at the Jewish Museum in New York, which has digitized them, making them easily accessible to the public. Or just stay tuned for more of J.’s Torah columns.