1. James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Coding
James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Tissot often produced paintings with ambiguous narratives that are difficult to read. Here everyone seems to be engaged in decoding someone else, in reading their body language and expression. It seems meaning can be encoded bodily. Yet no one seems to be conscious that they are being read, and no one returns an onlooker’s gaze.
Look: In this painting Tissot depicts what seems to be the end of a ship-board romance. The characters scrutinise each other. If the couple in the foreground are engaged in a romance, it is suspect: the young officer wears a ring but the young lady does not. She is not his wife.
Image: Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London

2. James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Coding
James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Think: Sketch the characters in the painting. Can you decode the expression on each face? Annotate your sketch with your ideas.
What clues are there to the relationships in the scene?
Where does each character look? Does that contribute to or confuse the narrative?
Image: Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London

3. James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Coding
James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Try: Ask two people from your class, or two other friends to help you. Get them to pose in way that tells a story about their relationship. Sketch or photograph this in your sketchbook and annotate the image explaining how it shows the relationship. Now try changing the story of their relationship with small movements. Just a change of position of a hand for example, or a turn of the head. Try different poses. Sketch or photograph and annotate as before.
Image: Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London

4. James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
Coding
James Tissot, The last evening, 1873
More: Think about how we encode our emotions in communications today. Do you use emoticons in your messages? Find examples you don’t mind other people seeing and put them in your sketchbook. Write about the emotion you show and what you were really feeling. Do these emoticons oversimplify our emotions?
Try drawing yourself making emoticon faces. Can you catch people’s real expressions and compare them to your drawings?
Image: Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London