International studio (43.1911)

In the Galleries


for the painter the most flattering of recompenses.”
Stevens lived to experience this in his own life. In
igoo, at the age of seventy-two, he was honored by
an exhibition of his work at the Ecole des Beaux-
Arts, an occasion of supreme gratification to him
and an indication of the high rank he had attained
in his own time.
The group of twenty-five pictures shown in New
York was not wholly representative of his highest
attainments. Unfortunately, the few finest exam-
ples which have drifted from time to time through
the dealers’ galleries or auction sales here have been
lost to public view in the great private collections of
the country. The exhibition interested largely as
illustrative of the work of different periods in the
long career of the man who has been called the
greatest genre painter of the nineteenth century.
Several of the canvases recalled his best-known
masterpieces in the Brussels and Antwerp muse-
ums. Whistler appeared on the scene later, but
the tiny marines, painted by Stevens in his declin-
ing years and seen here, might easily have been the
inspiration of the author of the pictorial “sym-
phonies” and “nocturnes.”
An exhibition of pictures by Gari Melchers was
on view at the Montross Galleries until March 15.

Courtesy oj The Ehrich Galleries
CARTHUSIAN MONK

BY ZURBARAN

IN THE GALLERIES
The Berlin Photographic Company last
month opened its new galleries on Madison

Avenue, near Forty-second Street, New York,
with a loan exhibition of pictures by the late Alfred
Stevens, which proved to be a significantly note-
worthy event. It constituted the first exhibition of

Stevens’s works exclusively ever held in this country
and its distinction and success were largely due to
the efforts of Martin Birnbaum, the writer of the
admirable preface to the catalogue, and to William
M. Chase, who generously loaned a large number of
the pictures. Alfred Stevens, the Parisianized Bel-

gian artist, was preeminently a painter for painters.
He was the inspiration and delight of his younger
confreres of the sixties. Generously tolerant of the
then incomprehensible new school of impressionism,
he was the advocate and friend of Whistler and sym-
pathizer of Manet, whom he introduced to the deal¬

ers. In the Impressions oj a Painter, published in
his later years, Stevens thus defines the highest
reward which can fall to the lot of a painter: “The
sincere approbation of his professional comrades is


Courtesy oj Frederick Keppel &= Co.
LA TOUR DE l’HORLOGE BY MERYON

XLVIII