“After the Ball”
“After the Ball,” sometimes referred to as “The Confidence,” is a lovely oil on canvas painting by the Belgian painter, Alfred Stevens, from 1874 (not to be confused with Alfred Stevens, the English sculptor).
Today, Stevens is mostly remembered for his portraits depicting the modern, elegant women of the nineteenth century bourgeois and upper-middle class Parisian society. His fine detail of dress, jewelry, and other adornments, and rich palette for clothing and settings are hallmarks visible in his works; all features which are depicted wonderfully in this painting.
In this piece, Stevens provides a detailed visual glimpse into modern Parisian life. He depicts a woman consoling another, who appears to be weeping. A folded letter rests on the table to the right. One can only imagine the saddening news the letter contains. The women are exquisitely painted, with the nuances of Parisian fashion depicted through their jewelry, dress details, and hairstyles. Even the room they’re in offers rich visual information, such as the heavy floral curtains to the left, the oil lamp sitting atop the small round table to the right, with even the wainscoting along the wall in the background faithfully painted.
Though the subject is romanticism, with Stevens highlighting the deep emotion of the women in the painting, it is also neoclassical, with highly realistic depictions of the figures that are in an almost classical pose. This highlights his background in studying the great Renaissance masters.
Many artists from this time collected costumes and props to help in the realism of their art. Stevens reused the same models in the same dresses just three years later for his painting, “The Japanese mask,” with only the jewelry on the women being different.
“After the Ball” is currently in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in the United States.
For more on Alfred Stevens, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
