Jacques Joseph (James) Tissot, Portrait of Algernon Moses Marsden

For its lavish interiors, the objets d’art in the background, and the swaggering self-confidence of the sitter, this portrait has become an icon of the late 19th century’s Aesthetic movement. Painted by the fashionable artist Jacques Joseph (James) Tissot, a French émigré who settled in London in 1871, it depicts the art dealer Algernon Moses Marsden (1847–1920). A member of a wealthy Jewish family of clothing retailers, in 1872 Algernon Marsden established himself as an art dealer. For a short period, his gallery featured the work of successful painters such as John Constable (1776–1837), Giuseppe de Nittis (1846–1884) and Tissot, along with other lesser-known artists. A gambler and bon viveur, Marsden faced bankruptcy three times before fleeing to the United States in 1901, abandoning his wife and 10 children. Tissot’s portrait captures him at height of his fame. Marsden, then aged 30, sits nonchalantly in a leather armchair covered by a tiger-skin rug – an element of exoticism echoed in the Chinese and Japanese ceramics in the background. He leans his head on his left hand while holding a cigar in his right, his gaze directed at the viewer. Painted in Tissot’s studio in St John’s Wood, London, this portrait is carefully staged, conveying Marsden’s ostentatious self-confidence through the setting as much as the sitter’s attitude.