Holy Week and Easter Illustrated by James Tissot

Tissot's paintings of the events of Holy Week—based on his close observations of the people, customs, and landscapes of the Holy Land—can help us walk with Our Lord this week.

Mar 13, 2024

On this page are links to a selection of illustrations that artist James Tissot painted of the events of Holy Week with his commentaries, and relevant verses taken from the New Testament, which he published in his lavishly produced four volumes of The Life of our Saviour Jesus Christ: three hundred and sixty-five compositions from the four Gospels in 1897 (originally in French in 1894 as La Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ).

You can see all the main illustrations (and supplemental illustrations) and read all of Tissot’s extensive commentary for free in these volumes the Internet archive. The meditations in Tissot’s commentary are heart-wrenching, taken from the Scriptures and the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich about Christ’s life. The illustrations of the passion start here in Volume III.

In the linked list below, you can also see a preview of one of illustration for each day in Holy Week, out of the several illustrations Tissot created to illustrate the events of each day,

After his conversion back to the Catholic faith of his childhood, French artist James Tissot visited the Holy Land three times to capture as best he could the people, scenes, and customs of the beautiful land where Jesus lived—before modern ways of life erased them forever. His third trip was to visit scenes from the Old Testament. Each time he returned to France after one of those trips, Tissot used gouache (opaque watercolor) to paint hundreds of small format illustrations full of minutely observed details rendered with hundreds of tiny brushstrokes. His use of the medium was unique as far as I know. Gouache paintings are usually done in a much looser style.

Tissot had been a dedicated realist artist who refused an invitation from his friend Edgar Degas to join the Impressionists. With his Biblical illustrations, he became a super-realist, portraying not only physical but spiritual events in what is often called a cinematic style. Tissot painted these illustrations in a kind of altered state in which the events from Christ’s life appeared to him as if in a vision.

These works of art, which were the fruits of his intense contemplation, can be a help to us as we devotedly accompany Our Lord during Holy Week.

For a more-complete introduction to the amazing unclassifiable works of the complex and unique artist James Tissot, you might want to read this article “Contrasting Visions Of Painter James Tissot, The Secular And Sometime Mystical Realist.”

The images in this series are downloaded from the Brooklyn Museum. "RIGHTS STATEMENT: No known copyright restrictions."