James Abbott McNeill Whistler in the context of Whistler's Mother

Jacques Joseph Tissot (French: [ʒɑk ʒozɛf tiso]; 15 October 1836 – 8 August 1902), better known as James Tissot (UK: /ˈtɪsoʊ/ TISS-oh, US: /tiːˈsoʊ/ tee-SOH), was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. His career included work as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé.

Tissot served in the Franco-Prussian War on the side of France and later the Paris Commune. In 1871 he moved to London, where he found further success as an artist and began a relationship with Irishwoman Kathleen Newton, who lived with him as a close companion and muse until her death in 1882. Tissot maintained close relations with the Impressionist movement for much of his life, including James Abbott Whistler and friend and protégé Edgar Degas. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1894.

Aestheticism (also known as the aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts, and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment expressed in the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished, in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers, such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.

Aestheticism challenged the values of mainstream Victorian culture, as many Victorians believed that literature and art fulfilled important ethical roles. Writing in The Guardian, Fiona McCarthy states that "the aesthetic movement stood, in stark and sometimes shocking contrast, to the crass materialism of Britain, in the 19th century."

St Anne's Church serves in the Church of England the Soho section of London. It was consecrated on 21 March 1686 by Bishop Henry Compton as the parish church of the new civil and ecclesiastical parish of St Anne Within the Liberty of Westminster, created from part of the parish of St Martin in the Fields. The church is under the Deanery of Westminster (St Margaret) in the Diocese of London.

Parts of its churchyard around its west including tower are now the public park of St Anne's Gardens, accessed from the Shaftesbury Avenue end of Wardour Street. The church is accessed via a gate at that end of Dean Street.

Cultural references to Pierrot have been made since the inception of the character in the 17th century. His character in contemporary popular culture — in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall — is that of the sad clown, often pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Many cultural movements found him amenable to their respective causes: Decadents turned him into a disillusioned foe of idealism; Symbolists saw him as a lonely fellow-sufferer; Modernists converted him into a Whistlerian subject for canvases devoted to form and color and line.

This page lists the extensive use of Pierrot's stock character (whiteface with a tear, white shirt, cap, etc.) chronologically arranged according to country and artistic medium (e.g. music, film, literature). The vast geographical range from Europe to Asia and beyond shows how widespread interest in Pierrot is, as does the variation in the artistic styles, from traditional ballet to rap-songs and music videos.

The depiction of night in paintings is common in Western art. Paintings that feature a night scene as the theme may be religious or history paintings, genre scenes, portraits, landscapes, or other subject types. Some artworks involve religious or fantasy topics using the quality of dim night light to create mysterious atmospheres. The source of illumination in a night scene—whether it is the moon or an artificial light source—may be depicted directly, or it may be implied by the character and coloration of the light that reflects from the subjects depicted. They are sometimes called nocturnes, or night-pieces, such as Rembrandt's The Night Watch, or the German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich's Two Men Contemplating the Moon of 1819.

In America, James Abbott McNeill Whistler titled works as nocturnes to identify those paintings with a "dreamy, pensive mood" by applying the musical term, and likewise also titled (and retitled) works using other music expressions, such as a "symphony", "harmony", "study" or "arrangement", to emphasize the tonal qualities and the composition and to de-emphasize the narrative content. The use of the term "nocturne" can be associated with the Tonalist movement of the American of the late 19th century and early 20th century which is "characterized by soft, diffused light, muted tones and hazy outlined objects, all of which imbue the works with a strong sense of mood." Along with winter scenes, nocturnes were a common Tonalist theme. Frederic Remington used the term as well for his nocturne scenes of the American Old West.