Alfred Stevens

Belgian artist Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) was one of the most well-known artists in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. He caused a furore with his paintings of elegant, intriguing and distant women. The artist captured the contemporary worldly woman convincingly and deftly, paying close attention to the gorgeous textures of the clothing and luxuriously appointed interiors.

Stevens started out as a painter of historical and socially realistic scenes. It was at the Paris World’s Fair of 1855 that he achieved a breakthrough, with a painting of a beggar woman and her children in the snow. In this early period of his career Stevens was particularly influenced by painters such as Gustave Courbet and by the Dutch interior tradition of the seventeenth century.

Parisian life But Stevens soon jettisoned this subject matter for the model in the studio, and more particularly for portraits of society ladies and tableaux taken from the daily life of the upper classes. These paintings display similarities with the work of artist friends such as Edouard Manet, James Tissot and James McNeill Whistler. They evoke the spirit of gay Parisian life. In his paintings Stevens achieved a striking and convincing rendition of the complex emotions of the contemporary sophisticated woman, at the same time paying considerable attention to clothing and interior.

Alfred Stevens
Kurator: Edwin Becker, Michel Draguet