Sunday, December 27, 2009

Child Anecdote

Not quite the usual kind.

We are at the Brooklyn Museum of Art to see James Tissot's Life Of Christ watercolors. The tour guide gives a brief account of Tissot's life, mentioning that he left his native France and lived with a woman named Kathleen Newton and her two children in London for eight years. She then died of tuberculosis (Wikipedia says suicide in the late stages of consumption) and he returned to Paris. Years later he experienced a religious vision in the church of Saint Sulpice and began his ten-year project of researching and depicting the life of Christ.

She will be showing us some highlights of the collection, the guide explains, and if we have any questions she'll be glad to...my M. is raising her hand already. "Yes?" says the guide, "do you have a question?"

M: Yes. What happened to the two children?