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Two Belle Ēpoque beauties by Alfred Stevens (1823 -1906)
specialists in his work, we are delighted to have recently acquired not one but
two paintings by the Belgian, Alfred
Stevens – neither of which has been seen in public for over eighty years.
Both pictures are the
same size and painted on panel, with distinguished provenance and exhibition
histories. Trahie is a relatively
early picturedating from the mid-1860s
whilst Girl in a kimono was painted
in 1876, contrasting sharply in technique and palette from one another.
The model for Girl in a kimono, recorded in the
artist’s work diaries as ‘Agathe’, features in several of his most famous
paintings from 1870 -1884, his ‘power’ years. With her distinctive auburn hair
and fair skin, Agathe can be seen in Le
Bain (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), Souvenirs
et regrets (Williamstown, Massachusetts, The Sterling and Francine Clark
Art Institute) Après le bal (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Méditation (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts)
to name a few. These small, intimate single figure subjects are the finest
endorsement for Stevens’ status as
one of the leading painters of his time, a claim familiar to readers of our Gallery Notes and followers of our
numerous Stevens publications and
exhibitions. Stevens was strictly a
genre painter who did not consider himself a portraitist and made no secret of
his real and everlasting preference for women as his sitters.
Trahie and Girl in a kimono will be
on our stand B17 at MASTERPIECE (26th June – 2nd
July).