The Thames, c.1876 James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of James Jacques Joseph Tissot also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Thames is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

A pair of pale trousers stretches almost the full width of the boat, ending in blue socks and two-tone shoes. Their owner lounges against the rail in a dark blue coat, with little concern for the crowded river around him. Behind him, two women sit beneath black parasols. Joseph Tissot places us close to this comfortably crowded group in The Thames, painted around 1876: there is barely room between the trailing clothes, cushions, rugs, and dogs.

The clothes give the foreground its color and texture. Red-and-black checks stand out beside a dress of pale blue-gray, while dark navy fabric spills across the man’s legs. The parasols form two broad, angular roofs above the faces. Beyond them, the space breaks into a dense network of masts, ropes, funnels, and hulls. A Union Jack rises just above the left parasol, and heavy black smoke spreads across the upper sky. The water offers a lighter interval, its gray-green surface broken into short, shimmering strokes.

This is no secluded riverside retreat. The picnic takes place amid the traffic of a working port, yet the company seems to occupy a private sitting room afloat. A wicker basket and the champagne bottle visible at the lower edge help establish the outing. When the picture appeared at the Royal Academy’s 1876 exhibition, critics objected sharply to its social implications. A man sharing champagne with two women without a chaperone suggested prostitution to some reviewers. That reading may also have owed something to contemporary hostility toward the French, rather than to anything Tissot makes explicit.

The industrial setting carries another association. The owner, Kaye Knowles, probably commissioned the painting; his fortune derived from his grandfather’s coal business in Lancashire. Coal cargoes, gasworks, and steamship smoke connect this leisurely foreground to the industry that supported his wealth. The Thames is both the place for an afternoon’s pleasure and a busy route for the movement of fuel and goods.

Tissot gives the dogs their own small scene within the human one. A pug sits upright between the figures, its dark face turned toward us. Below, a larger black dog lies curled on the patterned deck covering, asleep beneath the man’s outstretched legs, with all that shipping passing close by.