Alfred Stevens: Japonisme and Family

"The Visit" by Alfred Stevens

"The arrival of Japanese prints in Paris, perhaps in 1856, led to an interest - or rather a rage - for Japanese art and artifacts of every kind. With Bracquemond and Whistler, Stevens and Degas were among the first enthusiasts and collectors. Stevens spent lavishly as we see from the quantities of screens, porcelain wall coverings, bibelots, paper parasols, lamps, kimonos and the like, which provided the artist with a mosaic of exotic and sophisticated colors in many of his interiors. However much Stevens enjoyed 'le Japonisme', his own work was not as influenced by Japanese art as was that of his friend Whistler.

One of his most famous Japonisme-influenced works is ' La Parisienne Japonaise' (1872). He realized several portraits of young women dressed in kimonos, and Japanese elements feature in many other paintings of his, such as the early 'La Dame en Rose' (1866), which combines a view of a fashionably dressed woman in an interior with a detailed examination of Japanese objects, and 'The Psyche' (1871), wherein on a chair there sit Japanese prints, indicating his artistic passion.*

The following year, feeling confident of his art and his future, Stevens married Marie Blanc, granddaughter of General Sausset. The witnesses to their marriage tell us something of the progress Stevens was making in the artistic and literary  mlieux of Paris - Eugene Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas fils, Florent Willems and Bayard de la Vingtrie. Just as Alfred had been one of four children, so he and Marie would have four. Just as Marie had already appeared as a model and would continue to do in some of the major works of the 1860's, so the children would begin to appear in their turn."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Alfred Stevens" by Peter Mitchell.)
* Paragraph from: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Japonisme