Alfred Stevens: Impressionist Associations

"The Parisian Sphinx" by Alfred Stevens

"The friendship between Alfred Stevens and Edouard Manet strengthened in the decade of the 1860's. Their relationship was one of mutual respect and admiration. A letter of Manet's survives in which he wrote, 'Yesterday I saw at Hoschede's a superb Stevens, please pass on to him my sincere compliments.' At the Thursday evening gatherings at Madame Auguste Manet's, Stevens regularly met Degas, the mercurial Baudelaire and the Morisot sisters. 

Manet used Stevens' studio to paint Spanish dancers from the Hippodrome. We do not know why Stevens failed to accompany Manet, as planned, on a journey to Spain, but he did not fail his friend later on in 1871, with a more important matter. (We must keep reminding ourselves, of course, that Manet had not yet 'arrived' by any means). Manet asked Stevens if he could leave some of his work in the Stevens studio so that it might be seen by Durand-Ruel, on one of his visits. The great dealer duly came by and, with characteristic foresight, bought the Manets. 

Stevens, Degas and the Manet brothers were together in refusing to leave during the Franco-Prussian War, including the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870. Stevens, of course, as a foreigner from Belgium, did not have to serve in the French forces, but he insisted in volunteering and this was never forgotten by the French authorities. Stevens sent his wife Marie and family to Brussels, writing to her by balloon, and kept his mother with him in Paris.

The fact that the siege did not prevent his painting will hardly surprise the reader. It is difficult to imagine what could have done so! Victorine Meurent, a model shared by Manet and Stevens, appears in 'The Parisian Sphinx' in one of the most ravishing of Stevens' small canvases painted during this time. Later on when Manet died in 1883, Stevens was one of the pallbearers and on a committee to campaign for the exhibition and sale of his work."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Alfred Stevens" by Peter Mitchell.)