A lady in white regency dress and black stole says her farewells to a
gentleman at a tall cast-iron garden gate. Autumn has turned the leaves
above their heads yellow and the couple's mood is sombre.
This is one of the first works the French artist James Tissot painted after
his arrival in London in 1871, and one of several in which he treated the
theme of parting. It has been suggested that such subjects were provoked
by Tissot's sudden departure from his native Paris and his sense of
displacement in London, although clearly he was also responding to the
English taste for narrative and costume.
The reluctantly parting couple are divided by the railing that symbolizes
their imminent separation. The scissors which dangle from the lady's waist
also allude to their division, yet the flower symbolism of the ivy and holly
along the railing would have been understood by Victorian audiences to
allude to an eventual, happy ending. The image became famous through
an engraving published in 1873.