In 1875, French painter and printmaker James Jacques-Joseph Tissot met divorcee Kathleen Newton, and fell for her head-over-brushes.

They had a scant seven years together before he was devastated by her death from tuberculosis in 1882.

During that time, which Tissot described as the happiest in his life, he painted and drew Newton and her children numerous times.

There is a good selection of Tissot’s paintings, arranged chronologically, on Wikipaintings. Those in which Newton appears begin around the middle of page 2.

For more, see my previous Lines and Colors posts on James Jacques-Joseph Tissot, linked below.

[Addendum: Those who appreciate Tissot’s work — and I think he is a very good painter who is often unjustly overlooked and underrated — will enjoy Lucy Paquette’s blog, which is devoted to her historical novel about the painter: The Hammock.

There is also a historical dramatization of Kathleen Newton’s encounter with Tissot: A Type of Beauty: the story of Kathleen Newton, by Patricia O’Reilly.]

Tom Root is a painter and portraitist who studied at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Connecticut and the Ringling School of Art and Design in Florida, and currently resides in Tennessee.

Root’s work often has a fascinating quality of combining elements of drawing and painting in the same piece. In many of his paintings, he emphasizes the outline of his form, even to the point of utilizing an actual outline. In some ways the effect reminds me of the classic American illustrator Dean Cornwell. In all of root’s work, whether line is evident or not, there is an emphasis on the underlying draftsmanship.

I particularly enjoy works in which he has deliberately left parts of the painting in their drawing phase — as if unfinished, but with an undeniable completeness in the feeling of the final work. The effect is one in which you relate to the subject as a person, and then in the space of a short eye scan, you are confronted with the work as obvious lines and colors on a two dimensional surface. Wonderful.

Root’s website has galleries of his portraits, as well as his work in other areas, including drawings and nature studies from life. There is also a section called “Imaginary” that features what might be children’s book illustrations, with a delightful feeling of Golden Age illustration. I don’t see any mention of specific book projects, but Root’s brief bio indicates that he is a writer of children’s stories, as well as a songwriter and musician.

Root is married to landscape painter Peggy Root, who I profiled here on Lines and Colors back in January. Together, they run the Root Studio School in Johnson City, Tennessee.