Alfred Stevens
1823 - 1906

Though born in Brussels , Belgium in 1823, Alfred Stevens spent most of his artistic career in France . In 1844, he moved to Paris to study under several artists, including Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Stevens returned to Brussells long enough to make his artistic debut at the Brussels Salon in 1851, but returned to Paris the next year where he remained the rest of his life. In 1853, he was awarded a third-class medal in the Paris Salon and continued to be a regular contributor to the Salon for many years, eventually achieving the status of hors concours , which meant guaranteed acceptance in the Salon's annual exhibitions.

Stevens concentrated mostly on fashionable women in upscale interiors, frequently reflecting the contemporary Parisian interest in japonisme , an interest shared by his good friend Edouard Manet. His friendship with Manet and the Morisot family led to his frequenting Impressionist circles. Though Stevens was never considered an Impressionist himself, many of the artistic elements that characterized the work of friends like Manet and Degas would show up in the portraits for which he was best known. In “The Pink Lady”, for example, one can see a hint of their broken brushwork, but more obviously, Stevens uses Japanese elements typical of the Impressionists, as seen in the lantern the lady holds and the fan on the console table. In addition, the broad swaths of dark color forming the background are characteristic of Manet, and the use of the mirror image is a repetitive theme which the Impressionists borrowed from Velasquez.

Throughout the last few decades of the nineteenth century, Stevens's reputation spread across Europe and to the United States where his work was collected by the wealthy, including the Vanderbilt family. In 1900, he became the first living artist to be honored with a solo retrospective exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

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