Shown from September 18, 2009 till January 24, 2010

The Belgian artist Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) caused a furore in Paris with his paintings of intriguing, elegant and distant women. But this successful chronicler of the beau monde in the latter half of the nineteenth century originally started out as a painter of historical and socially realistic scenes.

It was at the Paris World’s Fair of 1855 that Stevens achieved a breakthrough, with a painting of a beggar woman and her children in the snow. In this early period of his career Stevens was particularly influenced by painters such as Gustave Courbet and by the Dutch interior tradition of the seventeenth century.

For more information please visit: http://www3.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=161537&lang=en