Meeting of Faust and Marguerite

In March 1859 Charles Gounod's opera Faust opened at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. That same year the young James Tissot went to Antwerp to see the Belgian painter Henri Leys, whose scenes of old Flemish and German towns were admired for their minute historical detail. This panel carries both influences. It shows the moment in Goethe's play when Faust first speaks to Marguerite in the street as she comes away from church, and she walks on, eyes lowered, a prayer book in her hands. Around them Tissot builds a late-medieval churchyard piece by piece, a red wooden porch over the stair, a painted wall beneath it, a stone effigy lying in a niche. The State bought the picture in 1860, and he showed it at the Salon the following year.