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Young Women Looking at Japanese Articles

James Tissot, 1869

James Tissot's Young Women Looking at Japanese Articles is an 1869 oil on canvas in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio. It shows two young French women absorbed in examining objects from Japan, a subject Tissot returned to several times in the 1860s.

Where to see it

The painting belongs to the Cincinnati Art Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, which acquired it in 1984. Works in a permanent collection are not always on display, since they may be rotated, lent or temporarily off view, so check the Cincinnati Art Museum's official website for current display status before you plan your visit.

What to look for in person

Two figures, one point of attention

Start with the two young women and where they are looking. The painting is built around their shared absorption in the Japanese objects in front of them, and their gazes and gestures quietly lead your eye toward the same place. Notice how little they seem aware of being observed: the scene feels like a private moment of curiosity rather than a posed portrait. Following their line of sight is the simplest way to read the composition and to see what Tissot wanted the viewer to linger over.

Japan seen from a Parisian room

The real subject here is encounter: European viewers handling and studying things made far away. In the 1860s, Japanese goods were drawing intense interest among artists and collectors in Paris, a fashion now usually called Japonisme, and Tissot was among the painters who took it up. This canvas is one of several Japanese-themed works he produced in that decade. As you look, compare how the imported objects are presented with how the women and their surroundings are painted, and consider how the picture frames the foreign items as things to be admired and examined.

Stepping close to an upright canvas

The canvas measures 70.5 by 50.2 cm, a moderate, upright format that rewards a close look rather than a view from across the room. Tissot is widely known for his careful, polished handling of costume and surface detail, so take time over the fabrics of the women's clothing and the finish of the objects they examine. Then step back again to see how the vertical shape stacks the figures and objects within the frame, keeping the viewer's attention concentrated on the small, shared act of looking.

About the painting

James Tissot painted Young Women Looking at Japanese Articles in 1869, working in oil on canvas. The scene shows two young French women examining objects that came from Japan, and it belongs to a group of paintings with Japanese themes that the artist made during the 1860s. Taken together, these works show Tissot responding to one of the strongest artistic currents of his time in Paris: a growing fascination with Japanese art and craft among painters, collectors and fashionable society.

What makes the picture worth seeing in person is the way it turns that fascination into a subject in its own right. Rather than painting Japanese objects on their own as a still life, Tissot shows people discovering them. The viewer watches the women look, so the painting is as much about curiosity and taste as it is about the objects themselves. For a visitor today, it offers a small window onto how Japan was imagined and consumed in a European interior in the late 1860s.

The canvas is 70.5 cm high and 50.2 cm wide, a size suited to a domestic setting and to close viewing. It entered the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio in 1984 and remains part of that collection. If you are visiting the museum, it is worth setting aside time to look slowly: first at the two figures and their shared focus, then at the painted surfaces of clothing and objects, and finally at the whole composition as a picture of looking itself.

Key facts

Sources

• Wikidata Q46941154
• Wikipedia (en) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org