After the wild acclaim of his illustrations of the Christian Bible, Tissot began a project to illustrate the Hebrew Bible. He made one of many trips to Palestine in 1896 to draw inspiration, observing the landscape where the biblical stories took place and producing what he felt were historically accurate illustrations.
Left: Standing male worshipper, Sumerian, c. 2900–2600 BCE. Gypsum, shell, black limestone, and bitumen, H. 11 5/8 in. (29.5 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Fletcher Fund, 1940. Right: Tissot, “Daniel and the Young Men,” c. 1896–1902
In 1902, when he was midway through the project, Tissot died suddenly. The series was continued by artists from Tissot’s studio, who finished his partially completed pictures or created works that approximated his style.