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Alfred Stevens
Belgian, 1823–1906
Moonlight (Au clair de la lune)
c. 1885
An elegantly dressed woman stands at an open window with one hand on the railing. Moonlight—which “beautifies everything,” Stevens once said—falls on her face and gown, picking out points of light that echo the stars in the sky. Only the thick plume of brown smoke, rising from a passing steamboat, mars the stillness of this contemplative nighttime scene.
Image Caption
Alfred Stevens, Moonlight (Au clair de la lune), c. 1885, oil on panel. Clark Art Institute, 1955.864
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
10 3/4 x 8 9/16 in. (27.3 x 21.8 cm)
Object Number
1955.864
Acquisition
Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status
On View
Select Bibliography
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Cunningham, Charles C., et al. The Elegant Academics: Chroniclers of 19th-Century Parisian Life. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: The Clark, 1974. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Interventions: Griselda Pollock Looks at Alfred Stevens, Oct. 21, 2000-April 8, 2001. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2000. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.
Provenance
William Merritt Chase, New York (by 1911–12, his sale, American Art Association Galleries, New York, 7 Mar. 1912, no. 12, as On the Balcony, sold to Vose); [Robert C. Vose, Boston, from 1912]; sale, American Art Association, New York, 23 Jan. 1924, no. 35, as On the Balcony; [Scott & Fowles, New York, sold to Clark, 18 Feb. 1930, as The Balcony–Night]; Robert Sterling Clark (1930–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.