Alfred Stevens: The Exposition Universelle

"A Duchess (The Blue Dress)" by Alfred Stevens

"We must backtrack to 1867 to emphasize that the Exposition Universelle was a personal triumph for Alfred Stevens. The fact that he was allocated a display of eighteen works, spanning his career to date, turned the event into a retrospective exhibition for him. Along with 'Tous les Bonheurs' and 'La Dame en Rose,' was a painting called 'La Duchesse,' also entitled the 'Blue Dress,' now at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The subject of 'Letters' was an inexhaustible source of inspiration. 

These works remind us why Stevens was so often compared to the Dutch seventeenth masters and called 'the Terborch of France.' It was noted that Stevens, unlike many genre painters never became laborious in handling detail and found in his small-scale scenes 'the breadth of technique one would expect in a painting of larger dimensions.' As with the earlier masters, the subject was merely a pretext for painting, and an inexhaustible one. His natural taste was superb and allowed him to tell stories with the most subtle nuances that draw the onlooker into the rich and sophisticated world of the Second Empire. He instinctively knew the boundary between what is elegant and chic and what is commonplace.

Success brought celebrity and an entree into the heady society so that he could hold to the maxim of 'paint the life that you lead.' Fortunately he had all the physical attributes he could wish for together with wit and charm, and was more or less irresistible to ladies, whom he adored. What fascinated the ladies was the knowledge that underneath was a passionate zest for living and painting. He said that a painter is always at work even when he is away from his studio and apparently doing nothing."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Alfred Stevens' by Paul Mitchell."