Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens (1823-1906)

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
The Painter and his Model
1855
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
Will you go out with me, Fido?
1859
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
In Memoriam
ca. 1861
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
The Reader
ca. 1865
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
A Duchess (The Blue Dress)
ca. 1866
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Alfred Émile Léopold Joseph Victor Stevens (11 May 1823 - 24 August 1906) – Belgian painter, active mainly in Paris, where he settled in 1852.  From about 1860 he achieved immense success with his pictures of young ladies in elegant interiors dressed in the height of fashion.

– Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
Hesitation
ca. 1867
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
The Bath
ca. 1867
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
The Visit
1870
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
Memories and Regrets
ca. 1874
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
After the Ball
1874
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
Young Woman looking in a Mirror
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
All Souls College, University of Oxford

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
Young Woman with a Japanese Screen
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
The Parisian Sphinx
ca. 1880
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens
In the Studio
1888
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Fashionable Women of the Nineteenth Century

Édouard de Beaumont
A Lady Promenading
ca. 1880
watercolor and tempera on bristol board
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

"In the 1880s a bustle pad, or a tier of stiffened horsehair or fabric frills, was introduced.  After 1887-1888 the bustle went out of fashion.  Towards the end of the 19th century the rate at which the fashionable silhouette changed quickened.  The increasing popularity of paper patterns and the growth of women's fashion periodicals encouraged home dress-making during the second half of the 19th century.  The withdrawal of the paper tax in the middle of the 19th century had stimulated the growth of publications, especially magazines aimed at women.  It was during this period that magazines introduced paper patterns.  By the 20th century the pace of change in the fashionable silhouette became ever more rapid as the expanding fashion industry, in conjunction with the media, became more effective at stimulating demand for a constant flow of new styles."

Florent Willems
The Important Response
ca. 1880
oil on panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

William Merritt Chase
Ready for the Ride
1877
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giovanni Boldini
Lady with a Guitar
ca. 1873
oil on panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

"The 1870s and 1880s introduced styles that revealed the natural silhouette.  A popular style was the 'princess line' dress, which was made without a waist seam to reveal the figure.  Skirts fitted tightly and required streamlined all-in-one underwear combinations.  Corsets became longer and were more rigidly boned.  The busk, known as the spoon busk because of its shape, extended to the stomach.  Sleeves were tight."  

William Morris Hunt
Priscilla
ca. 1873
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jules Breton
Woman with a Taper
1873
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Charles Fairfax Murray
Portrait of Clara Sentance
1870
watercolor and tempera on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Woman and Flowers 
(representing ancient rather than contemporary dress)
1868
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Frederic Leighton
Painter's Honeymoon
ca. 1864
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"In the 1860s the skirt was very full and worn over a cage crinoline, a petticoat supported by a frame of steel hoops that held it away from the legs.  A boned corset was worn over a chemise."

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Portrait of Wiencyzyslawa Barczewksa, Madame de Jurjewicz
1860
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Henry Wyatt
Vigilance
1835
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Martin Archer Shee
Portrait of Miss Moffat
1826
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

"In the 1820s and 1830s the waistline deepened, returning to its natural position.  As the natural waist returned, the bodice required a tighter fit and in contrast the skirt became fuller and bell-shaped.  There were several different sleeve styles but short puffed sleeves were generally worn for evening, and long sleeves for day.  Corsets continued to be worn.  These were lightly boned and quilted, with a deep busk.  Several layers of petticoats with frilled hems, sometimes of horsehair, were worn to support the full skirts."

Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of the Marchioness of Sutherland
ca. 1816
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Giuseppe Longhi
Head of a Young Woman wearing a Turban
ca. 1808-1812
lithograph
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

– quoted text from curator's notes at the Victoria & Albert Museum

17th-century Pictures of Women by Dutch and Flemish Artists

Michiel van Miereveld
Portrait of Aeltje van der Graft
1619
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of an old woman
ca. 1620
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Adam de Colone
Portrait of Margaret Graham, Lady Napier
1626
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Dutch Painting

God knows – it's not a milk-blue washt morning I see:
                                                                          delft, cobalt.
Firelight mails you: in links and mesh.
We get down to the meaning of brass things:
                                              – Are we on love's ladder, the
                                                      first rung?
                                                 Are we singing the song of
                                                      what will be sung?
Things with a gleam, things with a ring.
This ushers us into a Dutch evening.
It is not to be found everywhere –
      cheerful seriousness:
                                         The fire in your cheek
like that of the old masters, keeps keen.
                                                                 The light upon the
                                                                     shoulders
and chest is dense, sculptural: bronze-green.

      The motions are those (arrested) of bearing pitchers.

                                             There is a glaze
moving over objects – as if the sea
washed the scene with a passion:
And then, the sea froze.

– Lynn Strongin (1971)

Paulus Moreelse
Young woman with mirror, or, Allegory of profane love
1627
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Frans Hals
A Dutch lady
ca. 1643-45
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Michiel Sweerts
Old woman spinning
ca. 1646-48
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Rembrandt
Woman in bed
ca. 1647
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Jan de Bray
Portrait of a woman
1660
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Gerrit Dou
Young woman at a window with a copper bowl of apples and a cock pheasant
1663
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Frans van Mieris
Woman playing a lute
1663
oil on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

Jacob Ferdinand Voet
Portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden
ca. 1670-75
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Helen, the Sad Queen

Azure, 'tis I, come from Elysian shores
To hear the waves break on sonorous steps,
And see again the sunrise full of ships
Rising from darkness upon golden oars.

My solitary arms call on the kings
Whose salty beards amused my silver hands.
I wept; they sang of triumphs in far lands,
And gulfs fled backward upon watery wings.

I hear the trumpet and the martial horn
That wield the rhythm of the beating blade,
The song of rowers binding the tumult.

And the gods! exalting on the prow with scorn
Their ancient smile that the slow waves insult,
Hold out their sculpted arms to my sad shade.

– Paul Valéry, translated by Janet Lewis (1950)

Gerard Soest
Portrait of Lady Margaret Hay, Countess of Roxburghe
ca. 1675
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Adriaen van der Werff
Tancred's servant presenting the heart of Guiscard in a golden cup to Guismond
ca. 1675
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

attributed to Arnold Boonen
Portrait of a lady
ca. 1700
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Portraits of Women by Édouard Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Vuillard
1888
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Vuillard in profile
ca. 1888
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Vuillard reading, standing by a window
1893
oil on panel
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Arthur Fontaine in a pink shawl
1903
gouache and oil on cardboard
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Hessel au sofa
ca. 1900-1901
oil on cardboard
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

In Paris

Today as we walk in Paris I promise to focus
More on the sights before us than on the woman
We noticed yesterday in the photograph at the print shop,
The slender brunette who looked like you
As she posed with a violin case by a horse-drawn omnibus
Near the Luxembourg Gardens. Today I won't linger long
On the obvious point that her name is lost to history
As the name of the graveyard where her bones
Have been crumbling to dust for over a century.
The streets we're to wander will shine more brightly
Now that it's clear the day of her death
Is of little importance compared to the moment
Caught in the photograph as she makes her way
Through afternoon light like this toward the Seine,
Or compared to our walk as we pass the Gardens.
The cold rain that fell this morning has given way to sunshine.
The gleaming puddles reflect our mood
Just as they reflected hers as she stepped around them
Smiling to herself, happy that her audition
Went well this morning. After practicing scales
For years in a village whose name isn't recorded,
She can study in Paris with one of the masters
And serve the music according to laws more rigorous
Than any passed by the grand assemblies of Europe,
Laws I hope she always tried to obey.
No way of telling now how close her life
Came to the life she hoped for as she rambled,
On the day of the photograph, along the quay.
And why do I need to know it when she herself,
If offered a chance to peruse the book of the future,
Would likely shake her head no and turn away.
She wants to focus on the afternoon almost gone
As we want to focus now on breathing and savoring
While we stand on the bridge she stood on to watch
The steamers push up against the current or ease down.
This flickering light on the water as the boats pass by
Is the flow that many painters have tried to capture
Without holding too still. By the time these boats arrive
And unload the cargoes in distant provinces,
The flow may have carried us home across the ocean.
But to think of our leaving now is to wrong the moment.
We have to resist distraction as she resisted
If we want they city that bloomed for her
To bloom for us as her loyal followers.

– Carl Dennis (2002), published in Poetry (Chicago)

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Hessel reclining on a sofa
ca. 1899
oil on cardboard
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Édouard Vuillard
The Dressing Room, Madame Hessel reading at Amfréville
1906
oil and tempera on cardboard
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Hessel at home
ca. 1908
oil on cardboard
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Hessel, Château des Clayes
ca. 1920
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Woman in an interior, Madame Hessel at Les Clayes
1935
oil on paper
Princeton University Art Museum

Édouard Vuillard
Marcelle Aron (Madame Tristan Bernard)
1914
distemper on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Édouard Vuillard
Portrait of Madame Guerin
1916-17
distemper on paper, mounted on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Édouard Vuillard
Woman in blue
ca. 1925-35
pastel
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Édouard Vuillard
Madame Gaboriaud
1931-32
distemper and pastel on linen
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Édouard Vuillard
Madame André Wormser and her children
1926-27
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London