Alon Zakaim Fine Art

Beginning his artistic life as a painter of historically and socially realistic scenes, Alfred Stevens moved from his native Brussels to Paris in 1844, to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts at the time Ingres was professor; he was later to settle permanently in the city.

He had his breakthough in the 1855 Paris World Fair with a painting of a beggar woman in the snow, but he was soon to exchange this subject matter for society ladies and the lives of the upper classes. His work took influences from Tissot and Manet, and evokes a striking image of Parisian life in the 19th century.