P.O.A.
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas
DIMENSIONS: (unframed) 14.0 x 10.0 ins/ 35.6 x 25.4 cm
SIGNATURE: Signed ‘A Stevens’ (lower left)
In this painting, Alfred Stevens has created an incredibly atmospheric seascape, capturing the busyness of the area with the depiction of many ships, and people swimming.
Every summer Stevens would flee Paris and escape to the sea, something which a doctor once told him was essential for his health as he suffered from a bronchial condition. During this time, despite being an incredibly successful artist, Stevens’ extensive spending had put him in a spot of financial difficulty. As a result he made an agreement with the Parisian dealer, George Petit, that Stevens would paint during his break and Petit would fund his holiday in return for the paintings. This resulted Stevens producing a number of seascapes from the 1880’s onwards and it became a subject very dear to the artist’s heart.
Private collection, United Kingdom
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Despite being born in Belgium, it was in Paris that Stevens forged his artistic career. His work was first shown in the Paris Salon of 1851, when the artist was just 28 years old and then two years later he was awarded a third-class medal at the Salon. In 1855 Stevens was awarded a second class medal at the Universal Exposition in Paris and as a result he became an immensely popular artist with both collectors and fellow artists alike. He included Manet, Degas, Baudelaire, Morisot and Whistler as his close friends and he was a regular in the Café Guerbois in Paris.
Stevens started his art training with his first teacher Francois Navez in Brussels, where he quickly mastered the skill of painting portraits, landscapes and seascapes. He came from a prominent artistic family, his brother Joseph Edouard Stevens was a great painter of figures and animals as well as a watercolourist and capable engraver.
In 1844 Stevens went to Paris and worked under the instruction of Camille Roqueplan, a friend of his father’s; he also attended the classes at the École des Beaux-Arts, where Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was then professor.
His first picture is dated 1848, ‘A Soldier in Trouble’. His early works show a debt to the Realism of Gustave Courbet and the historical subjects of Henri Leys. After 1855 he turned to painting genre scenes depicting female subjects within middle-class Parisian interiors.
