Gustave-Max Stevens

Gustave-Max Stevens was born in 1871 in Saint-Gilles, Belgium. He was a pupil of Jean-Francois Portaels at the School of Fine Arts in Brussels from 1886. He studied under the direction of Fernand Cormon at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He co-founded Le Sillon, a visual arts movement founded in 1893 in Brussels. This circle was composed of young artists from the Brussels Academy who wanted to counterbalance neo-impressionism. They advocated a return to the tradition of realistic Flemish painting by privileging the effects of light. These painters used a rich and increasingly luminous palette and preferred to use thick layers of paint. Stevens exhibited at the first Salon d'art idealiste in 1896 and at the Salon des artistes français. He won a bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900. Stevens painted the child and its fragility and organized a 1905 exhibition on the theme "Art and the Child." Influenced first by the English pre-Raphaelites, Stevens evolved following a trip to Algeria and Tunisia toward a personal style closer to Impressionism. He is considered a Belgian Art Nouveau painter who also produced Orientalist works. He contributed to the publication "L'Estampe Modern." He died in 1946.