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An interesting story
(c. 1872)
Medium
oil on mahogany panel
Measurements
59.2 × 76.6 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1938
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
The title of this painting describes a comedy of manners, as James Tissot portrays two fashionably dressed women ignoring a soldier (whose uniform is by contrast conservative and outmoded) engrossed in his own telling of a tale. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872, this work was one of the first paintings Tissot showed in London after he left France after the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871.
Artwork Details
Inscription
inscribed in brown paint l.l.: J. J. TiSsot (TiSsot underlined)
Accession Number
536-4
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Daily Life Human Figures Relationships and Interactions
Subjects (specific)
discussions (events) maps (documents) men (male humans) scenes (depictions) soldiers storytelling women (female humans)
Provenance
Exhibited Royal Academy, London, 1872, no. 389, as An interesting story; possibly purchased directly from the artist by Miss Mary Emily Flinn (c. 1846–1937); her collection, Oxton, Birkenhead, England, by until 1937[1]; with Palser Gallery (dealer), London, 1938, as Tracing the North-West Passage; from where acquired for the Felton Bequest, 1938.
[1] Mary Emily was one of four children of Captain Henry Flinn (d. 1896), of ‘Gorselands’, Wallasey (near Oxton) in Birkenhead. A brother Frederick Woolven Flinn (or F. W. Flinn) was a Justice of the Peace and also owned ships like his father. When Mary Emily died, probate was granted to her surviving brother and another sister Edith Fraser (nee Flinn), see The London Gazette, 19 November 1937, accessed https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/34456/page/7316/data.pdf