FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Zenith Gallery Presents
Museum Studies II: Honoring the Female Perspective – Paintings by Bradley Stevens
Show dates: December 7, 2018 –February 2, 2019
Artist Talk: Saturday January 12, 3 pm
1429 Iris Street, NW, Washington DC 20012
In this new series of paintings, Bradley Stevens honors the artists who have influenced him and the museum-goers––in this case, all women––whom he sees as the vanguard of art, culture,and progress in these times.
By returning to his theme of museum interiors, Stevens relives his student years copying Master paintings at the National Gallery of Art and implements the lessons these artists have taught him. With his mastery of color, composition,and gesture, he lures us into the gallery and creates the intimacy of experiencing art.
Inspired by the resurgence of the women’s movement, he has chosen to feature women as advocates of these hallowed museum spaces.Their poses and expressions reveal complete captivation with and immersion in the art, such that the physical and psychological act of “looking” is the subject.
Stevens’ introspective museum studies are a meditation on the enduring power of art to educate, inspire,and transcend, and on women’s leadership to protect its place in our society.
Time seems to be in suspended animation during quarantine. Days are indistinguishable from one another. This current condition affords us ample time to reflect back on one’s life and the choices that were made. Here is an older man in the National Gallery of Art, seemingly deep in thought, surrounded by women from the 19th century.
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (L-R): 1. Édouard Manet, Madame Michel-Lévy, 1882 2. William Merritt Chase, Study of Flesh Color and Gold, 1888 3. Mary Cassatt, The Black Hat, 1890 4. Edgar Degas, Young Woman Dressing herself, 1885
This painting is my homage to Degas, the master of capturing human movement. It was completed last year during the worst of the pandemic and lockdown, when it was often impossible to visit family and loved ones. Pictured is my mother in her hometown Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts, gesticulating her thoughts about the painting to my wife Patricia. After Degas’ death, his heirs discovered in his studio dozens of small wax and clay figures, never before seen or exhibited. Many were restored and later cast in bronze. Today they are highly prized, three-dimensional studies of people in motion, often with the extreme or exaggerated gestures that Degas so loved.
For years, I had in my files this great image of a father and son, walking hand-in-hand and wearing matching casquettes, through the National Gallery of Art. I always wanted to somehow incorporate them in a painting but I couldn’t find the appropriate painting as their complement. Then I stumbled across Puvis de Chavannes’ The Prodigal Son from 1879. This biblical story of redemption, forgiveness and familial bond resonated in a deeply personal way.
While attending an event one evening at the grand Kogod courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery, my wife Patricia and I learned the upstairs galleries were open for guests. We took advantage of this rare opportunity to visit some of our favorite paintings.
Smithsonian American Art Museum - L-R: Cecilia Beaux - Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker), 1898 Abbott Handerson Thayer - Roses, 1890 John Singer Sargent - Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Mrs. John Jay Chapman), 1893
In his career of over 35 years, Bradley Stevens has forged a reputation as one of America’s leading realist painters. His style is contemporary realism, rooted in classical training yet boldly depicting the modern world with his penetrating eye. Stevens is unique among his peers for his exceptional achievements in three domains of representational art: portraits, landscapes, figurative city-scapes, and interiors. He skillfully combines these genres in his work, creating contemporary portraits of people and places. Stevens’ paintings are widely collected both privately and publicly throughout the United States, including by the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy in Paris, Monticello, Mount Vernon,and the nation’s preeminent corporations, universities,and hospitals. His portrait subjects are luminaries and leaders in education, business, law, science, philanthropy,and politics. His painting of Vernon E. Jordan Jr.hangs in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Other portraits include Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Governor Mark Warner,and the family of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. Stevens’ historical painting commemorating the Connecticut Compromise of 1787 adorns the U.S. Senate Reception Room, next to the Senate Chambers in the U.S. Capitol.
Now celebrating 38 years in the nation’s capital, Zenith is recognized for its unique mix of contemporary art in a wide variety of media, style and subject. The gallery provides high-quality acquisition, art consulting, commissioning, appraisal and framing services, through its gallery-salon sculpture garden off 16th Street at 1429 Iris St NW, WDC 0012. Zenith also curates rotating exhibits at the Eleven-Eleven Sculpture Space at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, WDC 20004.