BRADLEY STEVENS was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1954 and raised in Westport, Connecticut. In 1972, he attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1976, and a Master of Fine Arts in 1979. In addition to his formal art education, Stevens spent five years copying over three hundred Old Master paintings at the National Gallery of Art. In 1982, he was invited to teach drawing and anatomy at his alma mater; in 1988, he began teaching drawing and portrait painting at Georgetown University as well. He remained a faculty member of both institutions until the year 2000. In his career of over twenty-five years, Stevens has forged a reputation as one of America’s leading realist painters. His style is contemporary realism––rooted in classical training, yet boldly expressing modernity through his use of paint and his penetrating eye. Stevens is unique among his contemporaries for his exceptional achievements in three domains of representational art: portraiture, landscapes and figurative urban landscapes. He frequently works on commission, and many of the commissioned paintings are on a grand scale for public and private spaces. Stevens has painted the portraits of luminaries and leaders in the fields of education, business, medicine, law, science, philanthropy and politics. His stellar list of patrons includes Governor Mark Warner of Virginia, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., and the family of Senator John D. Rockefeller, IV. In January of 2007, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery acquired the portrait of Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. into their permanent collection. Stevens has reproduced historical portraits for the White House, U.S. Department of State, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Embassy in Paris, National Portrait Gallery and Monticello. In January 2002, the Smithsonian Institution commissioned him to reproduce Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. The painting now hangs in Mount Vernon.
