See also: Stevens, Alfred Stevens

Alfred Stevens , (May 11th 1823 - August 29th 1906) was a Belgian painter of the Belle Time.

Its life

Alfred Emile Stevens was born with Brussels where it is formed by François-Joseph Navez, a disciple of Jacques-Louis David. He is active mainly with Paris where he settles in 1844. He starts by painting subjects reflecting the miserable life of the lower classes of Paris.
Its table “what one calls vagrancy” draws the attention of Napoleon III during the World Fair of 1855 and pushes this one to rather re-examine the way whose its army stops the vagrants, for the benefit of the image of the army than to that of the vagrants cependant.
During a time, its historical topics and its taste for the Eastern kitsch make a painter fireman of it.
Starting from 1860, it changes subject and it is an enormous success thanks to its tables of young women equipped with the latest fashion posing in elegant interiors: its indoor scenes middle-class bring it closer to Henri Gervex. It is called the Gerald Terborch French, in homage its talent to return the details and the sumptuous fabrics.
It makes a triumph with the World Fair of Paris of 1867 when it receives the Légion of honor. It is as much at ease at the imperial court of Napoleon III and in the high society that in the artistic mediums and Bohemian of the capital. It is a close friend of Manet, to whom it introduces the merchant of tables Paul Durand-Ruel, and of its circle of relations: Degas, Morisot and Baudelaire.
It influences James Whistler with it shares an enthusiasm for the Japanese prints. It paints also coastal navy and scenes in a freer style, almost impressionist, near to Eugene Boudin or Johan Barthold Jongkind.
Towards the end of its life, its style is not without similarity with that of its contemporary John Singer Sargent.
It publishes in 1886 “Impressions on the painting” which is a considerable success.

It is, in 1900, the first artist living to obtain an individual exposure to the School of the Art schools of Paris.
It stops painting as from the years 1890 following health issues and it dies in Paris in 1906.
Its tables one be very popular as far as America, where the Almightyes Vanderbilt with the the United States bought several of them. The majority remained however in France or Belgique.
Like many painters of its generation, it fell completely into the lapse of memory at the expense of the impressionist with which it was however friendly.

List its principal works

• what one calls vagrancy, (1855), Musée of Orsay.
• Ophélia, (18??), Royal Museums of the Art schools of Brussels.
• the bath, (1867), Museum of Orsay.
• the letter of good-bye, (about 1867), Museum of Orsay.
• the living room of the artist, (18??), private collection.

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