THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM LIBRARY * Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/stevensOOunse K) 't ^ S: +■- MASTKHS IN AHT PI^ATK I LOANED BY VAN 0E8T A CO. [;^] STI-:V KNS THK I.ADY WITH A I'AN OWNKl) HY M. C. UAl^SCO - I J MASTKHS IN AH'i' PI.ATF: 11 [5'] LOANED BY 06ST & CO. ST KV KNS A MUHNIXc; IN TliK ('Ol^NTHV (’.OT.I j;( .TION OK rilK TiATl-. M. W MAlUilFH MASTERS IN' ART [7l I'r.ATi*: m STi iv i-:\ s rnK 1. \ i)Y IN m.r !•: MASTERS IX ART PI.ATE IV LOAN60 BY VAN 0E3T i. CO. [P] s'l'KV i;\s i:\ i:hv .ioy ROYAI. MTSKUM. IIIM SSK1..S H '^dpjVni MASTEKS IN AKT PEA'J’?: V LOANED BY VAN 06ST A CO. [ill STKV KNS A J APAXKSK MASK OWNKl) MY M. A. SVKMKNS mastp:rs in art pratk vi BY VAN 0E8T & CO. [ l.'O STKV KNS LOANED 1 ’AUVKT'rK OW N Mil HY V . II u<;o MASTKi^S IN v\HT PI. AIM VII VAN 065T * CO. : i-->] STi-:v i-:\s LOANED BY INK visrr OWNKn MY MMK. VKCAHDON 2; a X MASTKKri IX AKT PI.ATK VIII COKSOLA TIOX MASTEHS IN AUT JJI.A'I'K IX BY VAN OEST 1 CO. [ml LOANED STKV K\S r\ SIMIINX PAUISIKN aMUSI'H’M, \t\v kmp jgrsteji-.- MASTEKS IX ART PI.ATK X LOANED BY VAN 0E3T & CO. [21] S TKV I'lNS M-; m Li.M'c m-: k \ 1 ui-: pa irr nu\i:n u\ m. a. sakhkns MASTERS IN ART BORN 1828: DIED 1900 BELGIAN S CHOOL I T should be clearly understood that two Alfred Stevenses appear in the history of art. One was an Englishman who became the strongest Eng- lish sculptor of his day. Some of his works — the statues for the Wellington Memorial, for example, or the decorations of Dorchester House — are ex- tremely fine. This Stevens was also an admirable draftsman, and he painted some portrait heads which are very remarkable. The other Alfred Stevens is the subject of this sketch. Alfred Stevens, or, to give his full name, Alfred Emile Leopold Joseph Victor Ghislain Stevens, was born in Brussels on May ii, 1828. His father, Leopold Stevens, had served in the army. He was at Waterloo on the staff of the Prince of Orange. It may be that Alfred inherited from his father that military allure, that air of un beau sabreur that distinguished him in after-life. Indeed, he was accounted one of the handsome men of the Second Empire. His elder brother, Joseph, also became an artist, and painted animals with marked ability; and the younger brother, Arthur, became a dealer in art, who was one of the first to recognize the ability of Millet, of Rousseau, and of Corot. The young Stevens may have inherited some of his artistry from his father, who had a passion for pictures and collected many. His son, then, did not have the early struggle of many young artists. His father encouraged his talent, and at an early age he was put to work in the studio of Navez, in Brus- sels. This Navez was an honest painter, without genius, but one who had the intelligence to say to his pupils, “Look at Nature. She will teach you everything you need to know in the beginning.” Nothing but drawing was done in this atelier. Stevens, a born colorist, longed to paint. One day he was surprised, palette and brushes in his hand, by his master. The old man looked long at his study, then said, “Put on your cap, young man. We will go and talk this matter over with your grand- father.” Alfred obeyed, trembling, and after a long walk was brought into the presence of his grandfather. Monsieur Dufoy. “Dufoy,” said Navez, “you see before you a great painter.” So at least the story runs. Camille Roqueplan, a well-known painter of the time, was often in Brus- [ 23 ] 24 MASTERS IN ART sels. Monsieur Dufoy showed some of Alfred’s studies to him and the painter offered to take the youth to Paris. After a short time he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where, among other teachers, the great Monsieur Ingres sometimes corrected his work. However, Stevens returned to Brussels after a year or two of study in Paris. His first picture was called ‘The Wounded Soldier.’ It now hangs in the Museum of Hamburg. He also painted a ‘Young Man drawing an Anatomy Figure.’ Both these early pictures show the fine quality of a painter. Roque- plan, who was again in Brussels, saw these canvases. “Come back to Paris with me,” he said, “your place is with the masters.” Young Stevens returned to Paris and worked in the studio of a friend, Florent Willems, who painted pictures which en’:husiasts compared to Ter- borch. While of course this was much too high praise, Willems knew well the fine art of the old Flemings and Hollanders, and taught it to Stevens. Stevens’s earliest pictures at this stage were, indeed, mistaken for Willems’s, but the young man soon surpassed the elder. One of these paintings was a ‘Young Girl Reading,’ which is quite beautiful in quality. Our artist painted various other pictures at about this time, but his first great success was a canvas quite different from his later work called ‘Les Chasseurs de Vincennes,’ or ‘Ce qu’on appel le Vagabondage.’ This rep- resented soldiers taking some “unfortunates” to the police station. Apart from the fact that it was well painted, it created some little stir on account of the subject. Napoleon III. stopped before the picture at the Salon and, re- marking that such a duty was unworthy of soldiers, gave orders that they should not be employed in that way again. Stevens aftei'wards said that he had never thought of any political or sociological intention while painting his picture, yet the canvas achieved a result that more ambitious problem pictures often fail in producing. His next important picture was one called ‘Consolation’ (Plate viii). It represented a weeping woman with two other women trying to console her. The picture made a certain stir in the Salon and a dealer, pretending to think it a rather poor painting, offered Stevens fifteen hundred francs ($300) for the painting. The artist refused, and later had the satisfaction of selling the picture for six thousand francs. This picture marks the real beginning of Stevens’s successful career. Shortly after this, being now on the top wave of prosperity, Stevens married and took a fine studio. For Stevens the strong wave of prosperity had now set in, and for many years he had only to paint a picture to sell it for a good sum. It is to his credit that he still continued to make his paintings with the utmost care and con- science, despite the temptation to produce clever, scamped work, which the dealers would have eagerly bought. His work grew more and more popular, so that it became a question of whether or no he should be given the Medal of Honor. But certain persons of importance felt that mere getire painting should not be accorded the honors paid to historical painting. Also it was felt that his pictures dealt too exclusively with women. Robert Fleury, who was then a dictator in matters of art, said to him, “Promise me to change [ 24 ] STEVENS 25 your kind of subject and we will give you the Medal of Honor.” “ Keep your medal,” said Stevens, ‘‘for me. I’ll keep my way of painting.” Stevens painted very carefully and minutely, but fast, as well; and from something he says himself one may guess he sometimes turned out as many as thirty pictures a year. Money poured in, and he spent it royally in rich stuffs and Japanese screens and vases and bronzes. For he was one of the first to appreciate Japanese art in its curious revival in the “sixties.” Jap- anese art had a great vogue in France in Louis xv.’s time. But then, they were curios that were most affected, idols, pagodas, and “stuffs printed with flowers.” Later this interest in 'Japonoiseries suffered an eclipse. But in the beginning of the sixties Paris came again under the influence of this delightful Japanese art. Somebody, Braquemond the engraver, it is said, discovered a lot of prints from Hokusai, used, so the story goes, for wrapping-paper. He showed these to other artists. A veritable rage for Jap- anese prints developed. Diaz, Fortuny, James Tissot, Alphonse Legros, Manet, Whistler, Fantin-Latour, Degas, Monet, were some of the original admirers of Japanese art. Millet and Rousseau, so it is said, quarreled about who should have prints by Hokusai. And of these enthusiasts Alfred Stevens was not the least. His imperturbable Flemish good sense kept him, however, from imitating Japanese work in his paintings. He was content to make his interiors richer and more bizarre, with Japanese screens and stuffs and bronzes, but he kept to the good solid fat Flemish tradition of painting, — a tradition lost for a long time, but which Baron Leys rediscovered, as it were, in studying the work of the Van Eycks. One says this, and yet it may be that a certain thin- ness and dryness which later crept into Stevens’s work was not wholly the result of old age, but partly of this Japanese art. For Japanese art, with all its charm, can have a bad effect as well as good. At the gay court of Napoleon iii. Stevens was always a favorite. Both at the Tuileries and at the country parties in Compiegne, where there were very lively doings, he was persona grata. Perhaps it was more as un galant homme, and a witty one as well, rather than as an artist that he was welcomed; still his painting, brilliant yet discreet, was very much admired by the charming frail creatures of the court whom he knew so well how to paint. “A lightsome eye, a soldier’s mien” — these things Stevens brought with him, and more: he brought the reputation of a great artist. There have been artists, like Millet and Courbet, who could not have lived in such surroundings. But with Stevens it apparently had no bad effect, for surely no painting could be more soigne and conscientious than was his at that time. The wonderful gay world of the Second Empire deserves a word m passing. Founded in corruption, with an emperor whose very birth was suspicious, with an empress who, though beautiful, was, to say the least, indiscreet and foolish, this period still had its own charm — the charm of sans gene, oi diablerie, of joyousness. Paris was never gayer than in this time of the Second Empire. One thinks, in reading of it, of that false court to which came the Knight Geraint and his Lady Enid, where all the men were boors and all the women [ 25 ] 26 MASTERS IN ART wanton. And yet a certain elegance went with this corruption. It was the time of crinolines, of crime, and of crimson joys. But it was not only in court circles that he was famous and popular, but in the quasi-literary society as well, especially in that presided over by charming and well-born blue-stockings like the Princesse Mathilde. There he met men like Dumas fils, Flaubert, the Goncourts, and Edmond About. And though the art of these men lay in words, Stevens was famous among them all for his brilliant wit as well as for a certain bon sens FI amanJ, 'which never deserted him. Never were the boulevards gayer or more brilliant than in those days. Old men who know their Paris will tell you sadly that the city has never been so lively since tbe Franco-Prussian War. And of these brilliant boulevardiers Alfred Stevens was not the least. His dashing air of a cavalryman, his hand- some face, and his brilliant wit made him a favorite wherever he went. He was always welcome at the magic heure de F Absinthe m this or that famous cafe. He was an habitiieoi the theatres and the popular restaurants. In short, he was part of tout Paris, and for years he was able to live the brilliant life of a boulevardier and yet to paint as well as ever each morning on his wonderful little masterpieces. The Franco-Prussian broke rudely into these happy times. Stevens, like the son of a brave soldier, offered his services to the Government of Paris during the siege. And when one thinks of the Frenchman Monticelli running away to Marseilles to escape the siege, while the outlander Stevens offered his life to the city which had welcomed him, it appears that there may after all be some connection between honesty in art and honor in the conduct of life. This, with the resultant change in the government of France from an empire to a republic, was for Stevens the beginning of the end. Never after this did he win quite the same success. Never, indeed, did he again paint so well. The change was very slow, very gradual. It was twenty years in the making, yet to the student of his life it is evident the war marked the mo- ment. Before, his art was always growing and improving; afterwards, it began its slow beautiful decay. For years the immensely brilliant technique con- tinues, but something of the beautiful simplicity which made his early work not unworthy to be mentioned in tbe same breath with Vermeer or Ter- borch, something of this rich, full, simple facture is gone. After the war the painter’s life began again; but somehow it was never quite the same. Besides, he was getting older. He had some sort of malady, it is said, induced by paint poisoning, and bis doctor recommended him to be out of doors a great deal of the time. It is from this period that his marine paintings date. Some of them are quite charming. But it may be said that Stevens was not a born landscape or sea painter. At all events, bis outdoor work does not impress one as being so true or so closely studied as bis early Indoor work. Perhaps it was that he was getting older, for his indoor work as well, at this time, grows thinner and sleazier — it lacks la belle pate of the earlier days. And it is not so well drawn. There is always distinction, but not the same breath of life. [ 26 ] STEVENS 27 In 1880 the city of Paris put a street through the house where Stevens had been living and he was obliged to move. He took a sumptuous hotel in the rue de Calais, and installed there his remarkable collection of Japanese and Indian bric-a-brac. But the change seemed to mark the end of an epoch in his life. He was no longer so strong as he had been. Stevens lived to be quite an old man. Though he was always considered a great painter by those who should know, his vogue, to some extent, deserted him. His best pictures were sold. He could not paint for sale others as gcod. His life wore out with little incident , and he died in August, 1900, of old age. He was one of those unfortunates who have lived too long. Though his best work was still highly appreciated, he was too old to thoroughly savor this ap- preciation. He was too old ro work or to enjoy. But at least one pleasure was ^given to him. A few years before bis death a great exhibition was held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of all his works. This was an honor which till then had only been accorded to a few great artists, and to these after their death. Stevens in a sense tasted of his own immortality, and perhaps something of the bitterness of old age was taken from him. Stevens has been praised for various qualities, and first as a painter of women; for men seldom appear in his canvases, and if they do it is in a secondary sense. For instance, in one of his studio scenes the artist watches his model preparing for the sitting. But for the most part men do not ap- pear at all. This big, broad-sbouldered painter, a cavalry-officer in appear- ance, Le Beau Sabreur, as he was sometimes called, delighted in painting lit- tle nervous, modern women, doing the various delightfully unimportant things that so often make up their lives. While he would not have called him- self a psychologist, yet he was fond of noting the various little nuances of ex- pression or of action that float across the life of a modern woman. For, again, it was modernite that interested him. His pictures are wholly of their day and generation. It was the life about him that engaged him. He made no effort to reconstitute the costume or character of a past epoch, but he was quick to notice the characteristic or beautiful expressions of his own time, so that if his pictures had no other worth they still would be, as docu- ments of his period, of great interest to the historian. But of course there was much more than this to his work. It was modern to be sure, but he made no effort, as did contemporary novelists, like Balzac or Zola, to describe the whole Human Comedy, or to render all the characteristic aspects of an era. Rather, in his somewhat restricted sphere, he looked about him, saw what was beautiful, and selected the most charming, even more than the most characteristic, elements. At the same time, almost unconsciously, he was the painter par excellence of the reign of the third Napoleon. His best period coincided with this time — for, though he painted much later, his last works were hardly so good as those of his early and middle life. He had the courage to find the costume of his day beautiful. It has again become the mode to admire the flower-like forms of the crinoline; but Stevens at the very time it existed found the cos- tume of his day beautiful, and painted it delightfully, as it appeared to him. [ 27 ] 28 MASTERS I N ART More than any other painter that one knows, he had the gift to paint the dress of his time realistically, to be sure, and yet in so seductive a manner, with so much of artistry, that his pictures remain delightful, while the pictures of other men of the same time seem demode and grotesque. Again Stevens has been called an Intimiste, whatever that may mean. It is a term that is a little hard to define, this word Intimiste; but one may, per- haps, give an idea of what is meant by the word by saying that a man who could paint a few pussy-willows in a glass of water in such away as to indicate their charm might be called an Intimiste, while a man who could dash in a huge mass of red peonies in a brass vase in a decorative manner would, what- ever his virtues, hardly be called an Intimiste. Not that Stevens painted in the meticulous way demanded in painting pussy-v>'illows, but he did have the gift of suggesting something of the intimate charm of things, although this probably came about merely because he made them very well. And this brings us to Stevens’s real quality- — that he was a great painter. Probably a man never lived who better understood the value and interest of paint in itself. His work looked, as the French say, good enough to eat. And yet this does not really express its charm, for it was something beyond that. He brought the charm of surface, of paint quality, of excellent brush-work to such a point that one felt it to be a very important matter — more important, indeed, than it really is. In looking at his work, at his best things, one is tempted to think that these matters of brush-work, of appetizing surface, of belle pate, of la bonne peinture, in short, are matters of the first importance; that nothing else, indeed, matters very much if only these qualities are well secured. But Stevens would have been the last man to have said this himself. And it is on account of his other very real qualities of justness of observation, of truth in rendering, his senseof beauty, especially of thebeautyof color, — these things are what cause him to be taken very seriously by the most competent artists. Although he was a past master in the art of brush-work, it was Van Eyck who had his admiration rather than Rubens. One of his aphorisms was that before one could paint a mustache with one stroke of the brush it was necessary to learn to paint it hair by hair. His brush-work was, so to say, a mere by-product of his artistry; for he understood perfectly well that the great qualities of a work of art are things beyond mere smartness of handling. It is as a great painter par excellence that he will be chiefly known. For when a group of artists are gathered together, and the qualities of great modern artists are under discussion, it is Stevens m the end who is spoken of as the modern man who combined in himself most of the gifts of a painter. Stevens’s best work keeps “ le juste milieu,'' and yet this is not the result of timidity, but of level-headedness, — of calm Flemish joy in the handsome aspect of things. There is charm to his work — undoubted charm. But in his best work it is a by-product as we have said, never gained at the expense of truth, solid technique, or unaffiected arrangement. It is apparently uncon- scious, a something in the man which informed each figure he made. His technique is the despair of painters, — perfectly sound, logical, direct, — and [ 28 ] STEVENS 29 yet there is a charm to it, an appetizing quality which the most enrage paint teazers never get. One asks one’s seif what it is that makes him so great, and it may be this; that he begins (at a point in technique far beyond where most painters leave off) to embroider flowers of charm, and even sentiment, on the solidly woven canvas. His technique is at the same time the soundest and most appetizing of his time, and this makes one think of one of his own sayings, “We don’t disquiet ourselves enough in these days about execution, metier, painting for painting’s sake; but we shall be forced to go back to it — and only those who possess this master quality are assured of immortality.” What makes Alfred Stevens more than a mere fashionable painter of pretty women is the probity and justness of his vision and of his technique. He might have been immensely more popular than he was had he chosen to paint merely pretty faces. But his types, though often of a curious beauty, are sel- dom what one would call really pretty. The slight and curious perversions from the ideal were just what interested him. He was so enamoured of Life and Truth that he preferred to paint the charming women about him just as they were, making no effort to twist their features to some ideal type. One thing that makes Stevens different from other men is his style. His pictures remind one at first sight of the little Dutch masters, yet they are really essentially different. He had all a Belgian’s love of paint as paint. The best Dutch work seemed to transcend all paint or painter’s quality and come to something very like the real thing, the very aspect of nature. With Stevens, although his pictures are often surprisingly true, one always feels the stylist. He had a way of putting on paint, — one feels a little the clever stroke, — though he was intelligent enough to try to subdue this. Stevens’s technique is said to have been somewhat as follows: he painted in his picture, presumably upon a careful drawing, in square touches of thick, fat paint. This first painting was done de premier cou p or alia prima. That is, it was not made over a frotte, or rub-in, but painted directly on the white can- vas, touch by touch, with deliberation. Great care was taken to keep the surface smooth. Any irregularity or roughness of surface was smoothed down with a palette knife. And this first painting formed the basis of that famous email, or enamel, that Stevens’s admirers were always talking about. Furthermore, when this was thoroughly dry and hard, it was rubbed down as smoothly as possible with pumice-stone. On this subsequent repaintings and “glazes” were made, but the enameled surface of the canvas was care- fully retained. Later Stevens came to paint much more freely. He was more sure of him- self, put the color on very directly, and grew to value, partly on account of the ill-advised praise of friends, the clever, brilliant look of his brush-strokes. One of his paintings, which was shown in the Exposition of i88g, was a curious example of this. He had been painting an important picture called 'The Salon,’ and, wishing to try the effect of certain changes in his color-scheme, he put a glass over the picture, and where he wished to make changes, there he painted on the glass. A connoisseur coming in admired the fresh juicy touch [ 29 ] 30 MASTERS IN ART of the master so much that he persuaded him to carry the sketch made on glass to a certain sort of completion. The picture was interesting as a tour de force, with its brilliant little touches of paint directly put on. Stevens’s drawing was really very good, and yet a little lacking in refine- ment. That is, although he had studied under Ingres, his drawing had none of that subtlety which the name Ingres suggests to one’s mind. On the other hand, his proportions are always admirable. One feels that just about thus and thus sat the figure; that the head was just so large in relation to the body. He is not above getting one eye too high for the other; but the great thing about his drawing is that it is always that of an artist. There is always a sense of style to it, even though it be a painter’s style rather than a draftsman’s. It has been said that while Stevens’s composition is not always good, his design is always fine. The present writer would put it just the other way. Usually his composition was fairly good. That is, he pushed the figures and furniture about until they were fairly well placed, each in relation to the others, and his color composition was almost always good and often beauti- ful. But his sense of pattern, of the arabesque, as Mr. George Moore would put it, is not so marked nor yet so subtle as with Whistler orwith Albert Moore. If, then, Stevens pushed about his little figures and bits of furniture till they made a fairly good arrangement, in the matter of design, he was hardly so successful. The design, the arabesque, or silhouette of his main groups was the last thing he thought of. His pictures were not the result of a pro- found study of rhythm and repetition in line. It is true that sometimes, as in the ‘Billet de Faire Part’ (Plate x) the arrangement of line comes rather handsomely; but in many of his pictures there is no particular arrangement of line at all. The fact is, one must always think of him as a painter first and foremost. He often got other qualities as well, but it is evident that qualities of color and effect were his first preoccupation. The gesture of Stevens’s little figures, while always sufficient and charac- teristic, is seldom of the sort that engrosses one. Necessarily in pictures of his sort that was a quality which became secondary. His little people were of the modern kind, who, whatever they may feel, make but little expression of emotion beyond a raised eyebrow or the corner of a lip turned down. On the other hand, he understood perfectly well how to make the action of his fig- ures express the style and manner of their little world. His puppets are mon- daines, and every movement shows the languid grace of une dame du monde. Stevens has been rather obscured by the vogue of Whistler on the one hand and of the Impressionists on the other. But there is little doubt that he will come to his own some day. Speaking of Whistler, by the way, it may be said that Stevens, together with Degas, was almost the only modern painter of whom he ever spoke with respect. They were quick to perceive his tacti- cal error and never would admit that he was particularly good. Stevens was a painter’s painter, and yet, what does not always happen, a favorite of amateurs cognoscenti, and even of the man in the street. His best work — and most of his best work was done before the Franco-Prussian War — was of marvelous quality. Very “fat” in facture, and yet pushed to quite [ 30 ] STEVENS 31 a surprising state of finish. His pictures are good bric-a-brac; they have an amusing surface quality, and yet they are good art as well. They look, the best of them, very much like nature. Only he was a charmer. He told the truth in a delightfully seductive manner. Next to the charm of his facture perhaps his color is his most admirable quality. This color has nothing sweet or pretty about it, and yet there is a rarity, a distinction to it, which is very fine and satisfying. As a colorist Stevens was, indeed, remarkable. He had the gift to make harmonies of color. As a matter of fact he had made symphonies in gray, in yellow, or in blue, before Whistler was known at all as a painter. Only he did not call them symphonies. But he could always vary his color and intro- duce a note or notes of opposing or complementary color, always with perfect tact and discretion, so that the contrast came as a relief or divertisement, but never as a jarring note. Apart from his color-schemes his coloring of flesh was excellent; so much so that one is never particularly conscious of the color of the flesh. It simply looks right in the general harmony of things. Stevens had so many good points that it is hard to fix on one in particular. But surely this quality of color was one of the things in which he excelled. His color was not only beautiful in itself and in detail, but also the general color- scheme of his pictures was almost always beautiful. One often remembers his pictures by the color-scheme, although his drawing in his best period is perfectly good. It is difficult, too, to analyze the charm of his color. While the separate tones are handsome enough of themselves, it is by their relations to other tones that they are most beautiful; and this, indeed, is a mark of the true colorist, — that in making a tone he thinks always of the other colors in the picture. One of our most brilliant and able modern portrait-painters bas said that Stevens’s best work is the equal or even at times superior to that of the Little Masters of Holland, — men like Vermeer,Terborch, and Metzu. Greatpainter as Stevens was, it yet seems that this praise is somewhat excessive. He never carried his work so far as the best Dutch work has gone and, at the same time, he never quite attained to their wonderful ensemble. His work has all the charm of modernite, and the charm, too, that a mondaine air can give, so that the thoughtless might give him the palm over the bourgeois creations of theDutch painters. But if he has thecharm of modernness he alsohas some- thing of its defects. His work, like almost all modern work, is petulant. It lacks the fine calmness, sobriety, and simplicity which seem to have been the secret of the old men. There is no more instructive contrast than that between his work and that of the greater elder men. He knew their work thoroughly, he delighted in it; and with no effort to imitate it he did, nevertheless, try for many identical qualities in his own work. His own work was very remark- able — among painters it is regarded as the work of the nineteenth century which, technically, is the most impeccable. At the same time, when one com- pares his work with, let us say, a fine Metzu, to speak of a man not the great- est of Dutch painters, one perceives that the work of the elder man is superior. If it lacks the allure which Stevens certainly possessed, it is, on the other hand, [.-U] 32 MASTERS IN ART more highly finished, and at the same time simpler in effect. The touch is more limpid. The color, though not so brilliant, is really finer; and the draw- ing, at least in the case of Metzu, is more nervous, subtler, and more correct. In the case of De Hooch, one of course perceives that his figures are im- mensely inferior to those of Stevens, both in construction and in finish. On the other hand, Stevens never even began to attain the wonderful chiaroscuro, the sense of light and air, that was De Hooch’s birthright. Stevens, indeed, was first and always a figure painter, and a painter of still-life, stuffs, and textures. His interior effects are usually good enough to escape criticism, but are not remarkable for atmosphere. Again, with Vermeer, while Stevens’s colorations are more opulent, he never arrives at the Dutchman’s power of design, his sense of light and shade, and of atmosphere. Nor is his color so subtle and beautiful, even though it is more sumptuous. Stevens’s relations with the Impressionists were rather curious. He was at one time a good friend of Manet and, indeed, did him many good turns by helping him to sell his pictures. Later a coolness developed between the two men. It is said to have been caused by the exhibition of Manet’s ‘Le Bon Bock,’ a portrait of Dumoulin, the engraver, about to drink a “ bock,” or glass, of beer. Stevens on seeing the picture remarked, “It is good, but he is drink- ing beer of Harlem.” This meant that Manet’s painting suggested too much the work of the famous Franz Hals, of Harlem. Manet never forgave Stevens for this witticism. The Impressionists perturbed Stevens. He felt that they had a new word to say, but he was too able an executant, he knew his old masters too well, not to also feel that these youngsters spoke their piece haltingly and clumsily. Whistler was another intimate friend of Stevens. In fact Stevens was one of the few moderns whom Whistler was willing to admit as a well-equipped and able painter. It is a question, indeed, whether Stevens admired so much the work of Whistler. He admired Whistler as im bel esprit and as a painter whose work was full of character; but Stevens was too good a painter himself not to see the various shortcomings of Whistler’s art. The relations between the two men, however, always remained cordial. At the height of his reputation Stevens commanded magnificent prices. The story is told that Vanderbilt called at his studio and stopped before a picture. “How much ?” “Sorry,” replied the painter, “but the picture does not belong to me. It is M. Petit’s.” The man of many millions passed to another picture, asked the same question, and got the same answer. Several times this occurred. At last, stopping before another canvas, he asked, “And this too belongs to M. Petit.?” “That one is mine.” “And how much?” “Fifty thousand francs.” “Then it is yours no longer. It’s mine.” A quasi-student of Stevens was Henri Gervex, the painter of the once- famous ‘Rolla,’ and a man who in his day was a very able painter. Gervex painted Stevens himself, in his high “chapeau de forme a very effective pre- sentment, which Stevens is said not to have liked. The two men working to- gether made a huge cyclorama of Paris at different times during the nine- teenth century. And while it never attained quite the success it deserved, it [ 32 ] STEVENS 33 was nevertheless one of the show sights of Paris. Gervex, who was a good portrait-painter, is said to have made the portrait of the famous men such as Hugo, Renan, and De Lesseps, while Stevens painted women, charming or otherwise, such as Madame Recamier, George Sand and Sara Bernhardt. Stevens had for a number of years in Paris a class in painting for women, and while none of these became very remarkable painters it must be said that his instruction was excellent. The women had a big studio next to that of tbe master. Here all day they struggled, and here almost every day at eve- ning the master came and criticized their work, now praising it, more often finding defects. He never would let his students see him paint. Like most masters he kept the secret, if it were a secret, of the “pattern in the carpet” to himself. But such of his teachings as have come to us are interesting and stimulating, though sometimes vague and contradictory, as criticism not directed to the work at hand must always seem. The master wrote a little essay, or collection of apothegms, which he called ‘Impressions of a Painter.’ No painter has ever written with more intelli- gence and good sense about his art. His sympathies are very broad, and yet he does not make the mistake so often committed by cognoscenti of supposing that there are a hundred equally good ways of doing a thing. He perceives clearly that there is but one right way, and that a man’s work is important in so far as he comes near to that right way. Many of these maxims stick in one’s head, and a number of them are quoted in another part of this number. Che art of ^tt\)tns FERDINAND KHNOPFF ‘THE ART OF THE LATE ALFRED STEVENS BELGIAN PAINTER’ W HEN in February, 1900, a group of French painters in Paris, under the presidency of the Comtesse Greffulhe, the grande dame of art, obtained for the Belgian painter, Alfred Stevens, the honor (hitherto without precedent for a living artist) of an exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, that subtle poet the Comte Robert de Montesquiou wrote a preface for the catalogue, in which he formulated his delicate appreciation of the master in so definite a fashion that I cannot do better than simply transcribe it here in great part: “Alfred Stevens, the last — and perhaps the first — of those lesser Flem- ish masters who were great masters, since he surpasses Terborch and yields in no point to Vermeer. “Stevens, whom I would willingly call the sonnettiste of painting, for the art with which, in his ex(|uisite panels, he combines so harmoniously all the sheen of mirrors and satins, of lacquers and enamels, of eyes and of gems. “Stevens, concerning whom the present sovereign ot Flanders might have repeated, on sending him to France (a gift precious above all others), tbe Duke of Burgundy’s words about Van Fyck, ‘1 send you my best workman!’ [ 33 ] 34 MASTERS IN ART “Among the many claims of this subtle monographist of the eternal femi- nine to our admiration I would signalize the art with which, in his skilful and refined pictures, he varies the motif of Woman and Love under the form of that billet-doux, so often torn and scattered to the winds like the petals of a white rose; till Stevens might almost be called the ‘ peintre aux billets f as an old Swiss master was once the ‘peintre aix oeilletsd “I claim another merit tor him — for that future of his which already ex- ists in the present — in his contribution to the history of costume. In the retrospective view of Alfred Stevens’s canvases we find the curious fashions of the Second Empire, and especially those Indian cashmere shawls of which Stevens will ever remain the unique painter, as was his master Vermeer of Delft, of those vast unrolled maps which hang azure oceans and many-colored continents on the peaceful walls of Dutch interiors. . . .” “In December, 1895,” says M. J. Du Jardin, “there was a feast for the eyes in the Maison d’Art, Avenue de la Toison d’or, Brussels. Here were to be found collected together the greater number of the works of the celebrated artist. He has obtained — let us put it on record — all the highest distinc- tions and official honors to which he attaches great importance, while honestly doubting whether he had deserved them.” And this was, indeed, an entire feminine world, which justified the follow- ing noteworthy remarks by Camdle Lemonnier: “I recognize two great painters of womanhood in the present century, — Alfred Stevens and Francois Mdlet. Poles asunder as they are in their point of view they have, in their two methods of understanding her, summed up the modern woman from one extreme to the other. Millet’s woman does not live; she gives life to others. Stevens’s lives herself and gives death to others. The atmosphere breathed by the former is eternally refreshed by the winds, and is bounded only by the great open firmament. The latter, on the contrary, breathing an atmosphereof poison, stifles in mystery, paint, and perfumes. . . . Alfred Stevens and Francois Millet open out in their women great vistas into the unknown. They each present the problem of woman, and pose her in the attitude of an ancient sphinx. The world of woman touches the world of man, moreover, at so many points that to paint woman is to paint us all, from the cradle to the grave. It will be the characteristic mark of the art of this cen- tury that it has approached contemporary life through woman. Woman really forms a transition between the painting of the past and the painting of the future.” ALFRED STEVENS ‘IMPRESSIONS OF A PAINTER’ T he public easily confound romance with the true artistic poetry. One can by instinct become a painter of worth, but one can’t do a work of genius save by showing great good sense. The sincere approbation of his confreres is for a painter the most flattering of recompenses. So many painters stop when the hard part begins. One comes into the world a draftsman just as one is born a colorist. [ 34 ] STEVENS 35 They ought to have an exhibition every five years where each artist could only expose a single figure which “says nothing.” They ought to take from the Louvre more than fifteen hundred pictures. Woe unto the painter who only obtains the approbation of women! One is only a great painter on condition of being a master workman. One must know how to paint a mustache hair by hair before one permits one’s self to wipe it in with a single stroke of the brush. Nothing hurts a good picture more than bad neighbors. A fine picture of which one admires the effect at a distance ought equally to bear analysis when one looks at it near to. The critic of art has a penchant to occupy himself more with the literary side than with the technical part. True artists have a preference for “les belles laiJes.” We must be of our own time: we must submit to the influence of the sun, of the country in which we dwell, of our early education. A man does not understand his art well under a certain age. One should learn to draw with the brush as soon as possible. Execution is style in painting. Even a mediocre painter who paints his own period wdl be more interest- ing to futurity than one who, with more talent, has only painted times which he has never seen. A picture can only be judged justly ten years after its execution. Painters who depict their own time become historians. We can judge another artist’s sensibility from a flower that he has painted. In the art of painting one must first of all be a painter; the thinker comes afterwards. A picture should not, as is commonly said, stand out from its frame; the very opposite should be said. Time beautifies sound painting and destroys bad. Bad painting cracks in stars; good painting becomes like fine crackle china. To paint modern costume does not constitute a rriodernist. The artist at- tracted by modernity must above all be impregnated with a modern feeling. By looking at the palette of a painter, we may know with whom we have to reckon. The execution of a fine painting is agreeable to the touch. A true painter is always a thinker. Certain Dutch masters seem to have painted with precious stones ground into powder. To have a master’s picture retouched is a crime that ought to be seveiel)^ punished by law. Nothing is pardoned in a single figure picture; many things are excused in a picture with several figures. Painting is not done for exhibitions; refined work is smothered at the Salon; “shouters” come off better. Nothing can equal the happiness felt by a painter when, after a day’s labor, [ 35 ] 36 MASTERS IN ART he is satisfied with the work accomplished; but in the contrary case what despair is his! The Flemings and the Dutch are the first painters in the world. An arm by Rembrandt, though perhaps too short, is yet alive; an arm by the proficient in theory, though exact in proportion, remains inert. Rubens has often been of harm to the Flemish School, while Van Eyck has never been anything but its benefactor. KENYONCOX ‘PAINTERSANDSCULPTORs’ B etween 1820 and 1830 men began to wish to paint again. They were no longer willing to do without color or the delight of free and beautiful handling, and they tired of restricting their art to the delineation of Greek and Roman heroes with straight noses and curly hair. The love of light and color took them to the Orient, or they looked at the pictures of Rubens and Ver- onese and began to paint the Middle Ages and the Renaissance because they loved silks and brocades better than abstract draperies. Gradually it dawned upon them that the old masters had painted their own times and that they might do the same. They went into the fields and painted the landscape they saw there, — Troyon began to paint cattle. Millet to paint peasants, Courbet to paint the bourgeoisie. Finally, about i860, they dared again the fashionable lady, not merely in portraiture, but as the subject of a picture. The last of the academic restrictions on the subject-matter of art was swept away. And so we come back to the name with which we set out, that of Alfred Stevens, for no man has painted the modern woman of fashion as well as he. A Belgian by birth and early training, a Parisian by choice, he combined the wit and elegance of his adopted city with something of the old Dutch and Flem- ish schools, — the result being an art of bis own with a flavor unlike any other. Manet and Whistler were just beginning their careers when Stevens was doing some of his best work, tor there is charm in the sound and quiet painting of the sixties that I do not find to the same extent in that later work which shows him as the cleverest of virtuosi. Terborch or Vermeer, who told no stories, might not have understood the delicate mixture of irony and sentiment in such pictures as ‘Une Mere’ or ‘Une Veuve,’ — theywould hardlyhave cared for the fine literary skill and the exquisite restraint with which the incidents are presented, — but assuredly they would have appreciated the just notation of light and color, the perfect drawing, the absolute rendering of substance and texture. They would have seen in him a craftsman of their own lineage, a pupil of whom they might be proud. In ‘La Dame Rose,’ of tbe Brussels Museum, they would have found a picture after their own hearts, and while they might miss something of its serious beauty in his later canvases, neither they nor any true painter that ever lived could fail to admire the combination of subtle tone and color, with extreme ease and brilliancy of manipulation, which makes them almost unique in art. For us there is the added interest in the earlier paintings that the dresses of forty years ago have already become historic costumes, and have taken on, as such, a picturesqueness which we cannot yet find in those of twenty years later, which are merely out of fashion. [ 36 ] STEVENS 37 %i)t i^orfes of ^tebens DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PLATES is evident enough that the young Stevens was particularly interested in the fine contrast of black and white in his arrangement. The heads and the little figures are not made with that preciocite which distinguished Stevens’s later technique; but they are very well made none the less. Indeed, it may be said that on the whole Stevens’s earlier work was better made than his later. Here the technique is a little “tight,” as painters would say, but hardly more so than that of the best Dutch masters. The way in which the white handker- chief is contrasted against the black glove is skilfully managed, and the [ 39 ] 40 MASTERS IN ART contrast of different textures, as always with Stevens, is well observed. The white crinoline dress, far from being ridiculous, has a full flower-like aspect which one misses in the dress of to-day. It must be admitted that the types of face are hardly so individual and in- teresting as those Stevens later came to paint. On the other hand, the skill with which every detad is made, without at all iniuring the general effect, is remarkable. Among the interesting bits we may notice the wall paper, which is made in the extremest detail, every bit of the design being studied out, while, at the same time, the wall stays flat. Apart from its artistic merits, the picture will always have its particular interest as a document of life and manners in the reign of the third Napoleon. ‘UN SPHINX PARISIEN’ PLATEIX U N SPHINX PARISIEN’ is perhaps not so very sphinx-like after all. Stevens was not primarily a psychologist. While as a man of the world he was interested in all things, his real talent lay in painting the beautiful things. Here the arms are delightfully made, better drawn than in many of Stevens’s works. The effect of lio;ht coming from behind with its relation to the reflected light on the front of the figure is well considered. Note also the skilful way in which the black masses are Introduced as foils to the white dress. When we come to examine the face we find it interesting, mutine, perhaps no more sphinx-like than the face of any pretty woman. ‘LE BILLET DEFAIRE part’ PLATE X L E billet DE FAIRE PART’ is one of the best of Stevens’s composi- > tions, with its discreetly triste figure cutting the upright gilt lines on the wall. The picture, too, is well placed in relation to the figure, and the chair and table are in good position except that to our eyes, accustomed to “Arts and Crafts” styles, the design of the table does not look very handsome. While the pattern on the carpet is rather confused and, indeed, quite ugly, on the other hand it is painted with great skill. The way in which the floor is made to “lie flat” is remarkable. It has been pointed out that the hands are rather small, but they are very prettily painted. The face, too, with its discreetly arranged dark bonnet, telling well against the white ground, is quite charming. Stevens seldom painted a face that one would call really pretty except in his earliest pictures. In these he proved that he could make a pretty face if he chose. But later he came to be interested in the espi'egle or world-weary types of the Second Empire which, while not exactly beautiful, had a charm which is not always found with regular features. Possibly Stevens would be more widely known if he had painted strictly pretty faces. As it was, his paint- ings were for the most part quickly snapped up by connoisseurs and, till quite recently, have not been much reproduced. So that his pictures, while quite well known to artists and dilettanti, are hardly known at all to a great mass of people who love art. [ 40 ] STEVENS 41 A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL PAINTINGS BY STEVENS IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS B elgium. Antwerp, Museum of Beaux-Arts: Hopelessness; The Parisian Sphinx (Plate ix) — Brussels, Collection of Mme. de Bauer; The Confine- ment — Collection of Mme. ve Cardon: Remember; The Visit (Plate vii); The Hun- garian Pianist — Collection of M. E. Claremboux: View of Cape Martin — Collec- tion of J. and A. LeRoy Bros.: The Soldiers of Vincennes — Collection of M. Le- guiME: Lady Knitting — Collection of the late M. E. Marlier: The Morning in the Country (Plate ii) — Royal Museum: Every Joy (Plate iv); The Studio; Autumn Flowers; The Lady in Rose-color — Collection of M. A. Saerens: Fedora; The Japanese Mask (Plate v); Le Billet de Faire Part (Plate x) — Collection of M. F. Rohers: Revery — Collection of M. P. du Toict: Revery — Collection of M. R. Waracoue: The Last Day of Widowhood; The Four Seasons; The Cup of Tea — FRANCE. Paris, Luxembourg: The Passionate Song — Collection of Mme. la Princesse Borghese: Cruel Certainty — Property of Durand-Ruel: The Visitor — Collection of M. C. Gausco: The Lady in Yellow (Plate i) — Collection of M. G. V. Hugo: Miss Fauvette (Plate vi) — Collection of M. E. LeRoy: Idleness — Collection of M. Lhermitte: The Lady Bathing — Collection of M. le BARON DE Mesnil DE St. Front: Ophelia; Portrait of the Baronne de Mesnil de Saint- Front — Collection of M. de comte de Montesquiou: The Mirror — Collection OF M. G. Petit: The Little Girl and the Duck — Collection of M. A. Roux; The Drawing-room — Collection of M. L. Sarlin: The Visit to the Studio — GER- MANY. Berlin, Collection of M. L. Ravena: Consolation (Plate viii). L AMBOTTE, PAUL. L’oeuvre de Alfred Stevens. Brussels, 1907. Lemonnier, C. Alfred Stevens and son ceuvre. Brussels, 1906 — -R. comte de Montesouion- Fezensac. Alfred Stevens. Paris, 1900 — Reinach, J. Histoire du siecle 1789-1889. Paris, 1889 — Impressions on Painting. New York, 1886. A rchitect and contract reporter, 1906: Alfred Stevens— Bur- lington Magazine, 1909: D. S. Maccoll; Portraits of Alfred Stevens. 1909: E. F. Strange; Alfred Stevens — International Studio, 1906: F. Khnopft'; The Art of the late Alfred Stevens — Les Arts, 1906: G. Mourey; Alfred Stevens — Onze Kunst, 1907: P. Lambotte; Alfred Stevens — Revue Bleu, 1900; Exposition de Al- fred Stevens — Revue Illustree, 1900: A. Segard; Alfred Stevens. A LIST of the principal books and magazine articles DEALING WITH STEVENS MAGAZINE ARTICLES [ 41 ] MASTERS IN ART ALFRED STEVENS AND HIS WORK By Ca mi lie L emonnier Including “Impressions on Painting” by Alfred Stevens A HANDSOME, large quarto volume, 15 x 19 inches in size, con- taining 42 full-page plates in photogravure, reproducing the most important of the artist’s paintings and drawings as follows: LIST OF PLATES I. Reverie XXIII. Le Sphinx parisien II. Les Chasseurs de Vincennes XXIV. Remember III. La Femme en jaune XXV. Le Pianiste hongrois IV. Tous les bonheurs XXVI. La Psyche V. La Lettre de faire-part XXVII. Le Salon VI. La Consolation XXVIII. La Tasse de the VII. La Matinee a la Campagne XXIX. Les Visiteuses VIII. Miss Fauvette XXX. Le Dernier Jour du veuvage IX. X. L’Inde a Paris L’Atelier XXXI. Les Ouatre Saisons (Le Prin- temps, L’Ete) XI. XII. Fleurs d’automne La Tricoteuse (La Dame en gris) XXXII. XXXIII. Les Ouatre Saisons (L’Au- tomne, L’Hiver) Le Chant passionne XIII. La Fillette au Canard XXXIV. La Bete a bon Dieu XIV. La Visite XXXV. La Visite a 1’ Atelier XV. La Dame en rose XXXVI. Fedora XVI. Cruelle certitude XXXVII. Ophelie XVII. Desesperee XXXVIII. Reverie (Pastel) XVIII. XIX. La Femme au Bain Souvenirs et Regrets XXXIX. Portrait of Mme. la baronne du Mesnil de Saint-Front XX. Le Masque japonais XL. Vue du cap Martin XXL L’Accouchee XLI. Silhouette de Femme (Dessin) XXII. Far-Niente XLII. Etude (Eau-Forte) EDITION LIMITED TO 350 COPIES Price, 80 francs Express charges to the United States, I2 francs G. 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