Woman in the Studio (Translation)
Femme à l'atelier (Primary Title)
Alfred Stevens, Belgian, 1823 - 1906 (Artist)
Stevens was a Belgian painter whose high degree of finish and precise brushwork created realistic scenes with a clarity reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch painters. Making his career in Paris, he became known primarily for his representations of fashionably dressed women in elegant modern interiors and his depictions of artists in their studios. The sitter for this painting was Stevens's close friend Victorine Meurent (1844-1927), who began modeling for painter Thomas Couture at the age of sixteen. Throughout the 1860s, she also posed for Degas and was Manet's most frequent female model. Her nude likeness became notorious owing to the controversial reception of Manet's Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia (both from 1863, Orsay Museum, Paris). Meurent made a living as a musician and music teacher, supplementing her income through modeling and later becoming a professional painter. Although she seems to be playing the role of a bourgeois consumer in Steven's studio, her serious scrutiny of the painting on the easel is probably the painter's acknowledgment of her sincere interest in art.
Signed, bottom right: "Alfred Stevens"
Gift of Joseph T. and Jane Joel Knox
Nineteenth Century French and Russian Art: Works from the Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Univeristy of Richmond Museums, February 23 - April 27, 2014
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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