Joseph Stevens (painter)

From depicting sentimental scenes in a Romanticist manner his art developed towards a more Realist rendering of dogs living on the street or working for travelling entertainers.

[3] He was born in Brussels on 26 November 1816 as the son of Jean François Léopold Stevens (1791–1837) and Catherine Victorine Dufoy (1797–1875).

Father Stevens was an art collector, with a particular interest in Théodore Géricault.-He wished his sons to embark on an artistic career.

[5] studied drawing at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts of Brussels and followed courses with the animaliers Louis Robbe and Eugène Verboeckhoven.

Only after marrying on 3 December 1845 in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode the Irishwoman Marie Graham, originally from Cavan in Ireland, did he become more serious about his artistic career.

In 1852 he joined his two brothers in Paris where he lived for several years, dividing his time between the worldliness of the Imperial Court, in particular the Jardin des Tuileries, and the Bohemianism of café life.

Reportedly, he rode every morning on horseback in the Bois de Boulogne, where he came into contact with Empress Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III.

The poet dedicated to him the piece Les Bons Chiens ("Good Dogs"), the penultimate work, preceding Épilogue, in the collection Petits poèmes en prose.

He received many distinctions during his career including: Despite (or perhaps because of) his success, he fell prey to alcoholism in his later years and was no longer able to paint.

Stevens could not free himself of his initial bourgeois sentimentalism as is evident in his 1848 painting Alone in the world (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium).

[10] This realism, of which he was one of the pioneers, attracted the interest from the 1850s of predominantly French critics and intellectuals, particularly Baudelaire, who dedicated to him the prose poem Good Dogs (Les bons chiens), the ultimate from the collection Le Spleen de Paris which, incidentally, was inspired by Stevens' painting L'Intérieur du saltimbanque, and also Léon Cladel, who was inspired by Stevens' paintings to write Léon Cladel et sa kyrielle de chiens (1885).