Alfred Stevens

'Moonlight on the Sea' by Alfred Stevens ( Brussels 1823 – 1906 Paris )

1892

Alfred Stevens Brussels 1823 – 1906 Paris Belgian Painter 'Moonlight on the Sea' Signature: signed lower right and dated 1892 ‘A Stevens 92' Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: image size 81 x 65 cm, frame size 97,5 x 81,5 cm Biography: Alfred Stevens was born in Brussels, into a family deeply connected with the visual arts. His older brother Joseph (1816–1892) and his son Léopold (1866–1935) were both painters, while his other brother Arthur (1825–1899) was an art dealer and critic. His father, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars under the army of William I of the Netherlands, was an art collector with a notable collection of watercolors by Eugène Delacroix and other esteemed artists. Stevens’s upbringing was influenced by the environment of Café de l’Amitié, run by his maternal grandparents in Brussels, which served as a meeting place for prominent figures from the political, literary, and artistic spheres. Following the death of his father in 1837, Stevens left middle school to enroll at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. There, he came under the tutelage of François Navez, a Neo-Classical painter and former student of Jacques-Louis David, who was both the director of the academy and an old acquaintance of Stevens’s grandfather. Following a traditional curriculum, he initially drew from casts of classical sculptures and later transitioned to drawing from live models. In 1843, Stevens journeyed to Paris to join his already established brother, Joseph. He gained admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, the preeminent art school in Paris, although claims of him being a student of the director, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, are likely unfounded. One of his early works, The Pardon or Absolution (Hermitage, St. Petersburg), signed and dated 1849, showcased his mastery of a conventional naturalistic style influenced by 17th-century Dutch genre painting. Stevens’s work was first publicly exhibited in 1851, when three of his paintings were featured at the Brussels Salon. He received a third-class medal at the Paris Salon in 1853, followed by a second-class medal at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1855. His painting Ce qu’on appelle le vagabondage (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) garnered attention from Napoleon III, leading to a change in policy regarding the use of soldiers to remove the poor from the streets. Two other paintings displayed at the Salon in Antwerp in the same year, Chez soi or At Home and The Painter and his Model, introduced subjects from “la vie moderne” that became characteristic of his oeuvre: elegant young women dressed in contemporary fashion and artists in their studios. In 1857, Stevens made his first significant sale to a private collector when Consolation was purchased for a rumored 6,000 francs by the Berlin collector and dealer Ravéné. He and his brother also became part of the artistic milieu in Paris, frequenting salons hosted by Princess Mathilde and popular cafes, where they mingled with the likes of the Goncourt brothers, Théophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas. Stevens married Fanny Juliette Albertine Marie Hortense Blanc (1836-1891), a member of a wealthy Belgian family and a long-time acquaintance of the Stevens family, in 1858. The wedding was witnessed by the renowned painter Eugène Delacroix. The couple had four children: Leopold, Jean, Catherine, and Pierre. Stevens depicted his wife in numerous portraits, including Regrets and Memories. After her passing, he expressed enduring grief at her loss. During the 1860s, Stevens rose...

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