Tissot is best known for his brilliant pictures of English and French society in the 1860's and 1870', depicting in minute detail the ravishing costumes, decorative interiors and riverside scenes of the period. More than any other Victorian painter Tissot's pictures mirror exactly the habits and preoccupations of his age. Here Christopher Woods's engagingly written and copiously illustrated book surveys Tissot's entire career, revealing the tensions and contradictions that often lay beneath the deceptively glossy surface of his pictures.