Paintings by Bradley Stevens
Show Dates: November 20, 2020 – January 16, 2021
1429 Iris St. NW Washington DC 20012
REVIEWED by Mark Jenkins | Wash Post
Connecticut Compromise Mural: Read About
-Intro to artist’s talk video: https://vimeo.com/
The Prodigal Son video: https://vimeo.com/
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
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. In September 2006, Stevens completed a historical mural commemorating the Connecticut Compromise of 1787 for the U.S. Senate. The mural is installed in the Senate Reception Room, adjacent to the Senate Chambers in the U.S. Capitol. Stevens’ landscapes and figurative cityscapes are found in the collections of America’s preeminent corporations, associations and professional firms, including AARP, Cushman & Wakefield, FannieMae, Verizon, Wheat First Butcher & Singer and Wiley Rein & Fielding. He was honored by the National Parks Service for three consecutive years as one of the Top 100 Artists in the Arts for the Parks Competition. In 1999, he received the prestigious Steven L. Aschenbrenner Collector’s Award for his painting Approaching Rapids of the Grand Canyon.