Alfred Stevens

Prosper Crabbe, Brussels and Paris (acquired directly from the artist in circa 1874 and sold: his sale, Paris, Galerie Sedelmeyer, June 12, 1890, lot 22, illustrated)
Mme. Waedemon, Brussels, by 1900
Albert Saerens, Brussels, by 1907 (and sold: his sale, Brussels, December 17, 1923, lot 48)
Laurent Meeüs, Brussels, by 1928 
Private collection, Europe (by descent from the above)

 

Paris, Exposition Universelle Internationale, 1878, no. 216
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Historique de l'Art Belge, 1830-1880, 1880, no. 747
Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, L'Oeuvre d'Alfred Stevens,1900, no. 175 (lent by Mme. Waedemon)
Brussels, Société Royale des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Rétrospective de l'Art Belge, 1905, no. 968
Brussels-Antwerp, Société Royale des Beaux-Arts,  L'Oeuvre d'Alfred Stevens, 1907, no. 80
Paris, Salon d'automne, 1907, no. 161
Berlin, Art Belge, 1908, no. 208
Brussels, Musée d'Art Moderne, Exposition Alfred et Joseph Stevens, 1928. no. 49 (lent by L. Meeüs)
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Rétrospective Alfred Stevens, 1975, no. 30
Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Art Museum; Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery; Montréal, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Alfred Stevens, 1977, no. 23
New York, Adam Williams Fine Art, Alfred Stevens, 1823-1906, 2004

Eugène Montrosier, Les Artistes Modernes, Paris, 1881, vol. 1, p.139 
Louis Cardon, "Les modernistes: Alfred Stevens," La Féderation Artistique, Brussels, April 3, 1886, p. 8
Camille Lemonnier, "Alfred Stevens," L'Art et les Artistes, 1906, v. III, p. 112
Camille Lemonnier, Alfred Stevens et son oeuvre, suivi de 'Impressions sur la peinture' par Alfred Stevens, Brussels, 1906, pp. 23, 25, pl. XX, illustrated
Camille Lemonnier, L'École Belge de peinture, Brussels, 1906, pp. 83-84
Gabriel Mourey, "Alfred Stevens," Les Arts, December, 1906, p. 44 
Paul Lambotte, l'Oeuvre de Alfred Stevens, Brussels, 1907, p. 22. no. 17, illustrated        
Philip Hale, Alfred Stevens, Masters in Art series, vol. 10, Boston, 1910, p. 38, pl. V, illustrated
François Boucher, Alfred Stevens, Paris, 1930, pp. 4, 37, 38, 50, illustrated
Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, "Ricard et Stevens ... propos d'un double centenaire," La Renaissance de l'art français et des industries de luxe, vol. VII, January 1924, p. 89, illustrated
Gustave Van Zype, Les Frères Stevens, Brussels, 1936, pp. 33, 106, fig. 19, illustrated
S. Speth-Holterhoff, "Une Heure chez M. Laurent Meeüs," Apollo Chronique, 1941, page unknown
William A. Coles, Alfred Stevens, Ann Arbor, 1977, p. 52, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. This canvas has an old glue lining and while the cracking is slightly raised in the background to the left of the figures, it is not unstable. There is a small amount of restoration on the extreme right edge to allow the picture to fit the frame but in the picture proper, there is no retouching to or abrasion or discoloration, and we are extremely encouraged by the condition here. This painting has been recently restored, is in beautiful condition and should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Alfred Stevens painted Le Masque Japonais in 1874 or 1875, at the height of his international fame.  The clever interplay between two lovely Parisiennes and a Japanese theater mask that seems to chatter flirtatiously at them calls up a decade of Stevens' most popular compositions, while the monumentality he accorded the figures in this painting and the loose, assured brushwork with which he summarized their fashionable dresses attest to Stevens' increasingly close association with the still-controversial Edouard Manet and his Impressionist colleagues.  Almost immediately, Le Masque Japonais was purchased by one of Stevens' most influential patrons and the painting was featured prominently among the large group of the artist's works shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878, an exhibition at which Stevens received a first class medal and promotion to Commander in the French Legion of Honor (fig. 1).  Lent generously to nearly every significant exhibition of Stevens' work or Belgian painting for the next thirty years, and circulated in a particularly attractive photogravure, Le Masque Japonais has become a touchstone of Stevens' achievement. 

Stevens was born in Brussels and received his first artistic training there, but by 1844 he was studying in Paris with Camille Roqueplan and by 1852 he settled permanently in France.  Although his earliest works included history scenes and episodes of social realism, Stevens quickly found his calling in the depiction of the daily life of contemporary Paris, and most specifically the intimate world of fashionable upper class women.  With paintings that quietly evoked the seventeenth-century traditions of Maes or Terborch but which were realized with a incomparable eye for the most modish details and an exquisite feeling for nineteenth-century color, Stevens celebrated la belle Parisienne.  So closely is he associated with the visual imagery of Second Empire and Third Republic France that one can be easily forgiven for assuming Stevens himself was French -- indeed, the list of awards he received from the French state suggests that that haughty art establishment considered Stevens one of their own.  And in a critical review in 1877, Émile Bergerat complimented Stevens with a witticism borrowed from the popular novelist Théophile Gautier:  "On ne naît pas toujours dans sa patrie," -- "One isn't always born in one's native land."

Stevens began exhibiting scenes of well-dressed women paying calls, opening letters with palpable trepidation, or arranging flowers in lavishly detailed interiors around 1857 and had almost instant success.  His Salon entries were remarked upon for their beauty, their fidelity to contemporary fashion, and in particular for their modernité -- for although Stevens' favored subjects were images of long-standing popular appeal, he had a remarkable ability to make traditional themes absolutely current.  For several years in the 1860s Stevens was widely acclaimed for his skill in rendering elegant Kashmir shawls, a taste his models shared with the celebrated courtesan in Flaubert's contemporary novel L'Education sentimental (1869).  In the mid-1860s,  Stevens virtually invented a new painting trope, the beautiful young woman staring wistfully or inquiringly at an exotic oriental bibelot -- a marvelously detailed ivory elephant from India, a tiny Empress doll from Japan (fig 2).  France had long been a center of the luxury trade, and during the Second Empire's celebration of commerce and expanding French influence wondrous decorative objects of all types appeared on the Paris market.  Particularly attractive to artists and their literary colleagues were the prints and small figures imported from Japan which had only newly opened to the West in 1857.  Novelists often used a small Japanese trinket or a very costly antique as a plot device, a gift to catch a heroine's eye, or an object of greed or lust to  destroy a promising future.  A lavishly embroidered kimono in an unfamiliar color scheme might be a clue to a young lady's discerning taste or a suggestion that she was a demi-mondaine, collecting exotic objects as she collected men.  Stevens moved comfortably in a literary circle that included Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas fils, and the Goncourt brothers, all of whom admired, collected, and wrote about objects of Japanese art. And like James McNeill Whistler and James Tissot (fig. 3), Stevens built a significant personal collection of Japanese art and artifacts which he regularly included in his paintings.

By the 1870s, the impact of Japanese art on French paintings had become much more complex.  French artists in the broad Impressionist circle were actually incorporating stylistic strategies from Japanese prints into their own compositions.  Collecting Japanese fans and prints became a widespread fashion and artists occasionally poked fun at the faddishness, as Monet did in his portrait of his wife Camille, wearing a blond wig and posed in an elaborate kimono featuring a samurai that seems wrapped around her legs, shown at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876 (fig. 4).  Stevens' humor in Le Masque Japonais is gentler, for placement of the Noh theater mask at picture edge holds the focus on the true subject of his painting, the subtle contrasts between two beautiful models: soft gradations in their skin tones, the overlapping of their profiles, the skillful distinctions between their pink and peach dresses.  The Japanese mask, hanging from a red ribbon, is given a glint in his eye that makes him an active admirer of the lovely girls as is today's viewer. 

Le Masque Japonais has been dated to 1874-75 on the basis of the dresses worn by Stevens' young models -- both dresses were also used by Stevens for After the Ball (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) which is dated 1874 and the undated Tasse de Thé (Morlanwelz, Belgium, Musée Royale de Mariemont).  The Boston painter and drawing professor Philip Hale, who wrote the first book on Stevens for American audiences, identified the two young women in Le Masque Japonais as Stevens' nieces, daughters of his brother Arthur, Jeanne and Juliette, who posed for the artist frequently and would have been 17 and 16 in 1874.

Le Masque Japonais was acquired from Stevens by Prosper Crabbe, a wealthy Belgian politician and art lover who built a major collection of modern paintings ranging from Delacroix and Millet through Meissonier.  Crabbe was particularly supportive of Stevens, acquiring numerous paintings from his fellow Belgian beginning in 1861 and including two of Stevens' most important works, Le Masque Japonais and the famed portrait of Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Fedora (private collection).  In 1887, Stevens drew a beautiful, lifesize pastel of Madame Crabbe, which may have been a tribute from the artist to a friend, rather than a paid commission.

This catalogue entry was written by Alexandra Murphy.