Alfred Stevens - After the Ball [1874]

Alfred Stevens - After the Ball [1874], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting, also known as Confidence, is one of several by Stevens (Belgian, Blandford Forum, England, 1823 - London, 1906) to treat the theme of consolation. As in his other works from the 1870s, here the anecdotal content of a letter containing distressing news asserts itself in a glimpse of the life of fashionable Parisian women in their elegant interiors. Stevens's subject matter and his meticulous attention to contemporary dress and decor elicited analogies to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art; in fact, one critic called him the Gerard ter Borch of France.

[Oil on canvas, 95.9 x 68.9 cm]