Portrait of Tissot. American Art Association (1898).The life of Our Lord Jesus Christ: illustrated by over four hundred paintings and drawings taken from the four Gospels and from studies made in Palestine by J. James Tissot / exhibited under the management of the American art association of New York, managers for J. James Tissot, New York. New York: Press of J.J. Little & co., 1898.

Tissot’s artworks attracted much attention at the turn of the twentieth century. The traveling tour of Tissot’s watercolors drew masses of people, the record being 23,000 visitors in one day in Chicago. At the closure of the tour in 1900, the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences agreed to solicit funds for purchase of the collection, in part by public subscription. The call for help was made to Brooklynites through a series of notices and announcements in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Subscriptions flowed in at the rate of $300 – $1000 per day for several months, and the names of contributing individuals were periodically published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. These articles can be viewed online through Brooklyn Public Library’s digitization of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Conducting a simple keyword search for “Tissot” will return many results, revealing the public perception of Tissot’s artwork and the story of how the citizens of Brooklyn came together to acquire these works for the Brooklyn Museum collection.