painter and photographer(?), exhibited twenty-two still-life paintings at the Royal Academy, London, between 1810 and 1861, including Portrait of a Mare, the Property of J. Anderson, Esq. and The Dead Guinea Pig . He exhibited 246 works at the Royal Society of British Artists from its foundation in 1824 until 1864 and was elected a member of the society in 1825. He also exhibited seventy-five paintings with the British Institution up to 1865. In 1849 he arrived at Sydney with a collection of paintings, obviously all his own work, and engravings selected in London and Paris. He exhibited them at the Royal Hotel from 20 August. Announcing the exhibition, Bell’s Life remarked, rather ambiguously, that 'Some fifteen years ago he rated high amongst the still-life painters in England’. Conrad Martens , who became acquainted with Stevens soon after his arrival, was even less impressed, writing to his brother in England that 'although at first he appeared respectable, which gave promise of a valuable acquisition to our artist society, I soon found myself disappointed. There is a very great deal of sligh [sic] dodgery and humbug about him. He would not talk about London artists. That made me suspect something’.
The paintings in Stevens’s exhibition were primarily fruit, game and genre subjects such as Italian Boy with Hurdy Gurdy (45 guineas), Tambourine—A French Peasant Girl (40 guineas) and The Fruit Girl of Versailles , all previously been exhibited with the Society of British Artists. The exhibition also included several English scenes, although Stevens is not known to have exhibited landscapes in England. The most ambitious work was The Fruit and Game Stall , a painting in the still-life style that was his forte. Depicting a 'charming’ saleswoman offering a hare from her stall to a passer-by, it was valued by Stevens at 150 guineas, the price said to have been paid for the other of the pair when sold through the Manchester Institution. The Sydney Morning Herald critic, however, considered Stevens to be 'even more successful in his delineations of the human form’ than in still-life, describing The Pet Dog – Affection (a life-size half-length portrait of a woman fondling a spaniel) as 'a very sweet picture’, and writing of The Beggar’s Petition – Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man : 'If this painting were dirtied and cracked, and declared to be the work of an eminent artist of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, it would be valued at an immense sum’.
Despite such glowing reviews, Stevens appears to have had very little success in selling the collection and soon attempted to dispose of it by an alternative method. On 4 September 1849 he announced that all unsold paintings and engravings (about 200 works) would be sold by means of an art union, with 600 tickets at 2 guineas each. Since he had originally exhibited thirty-five paintings, twenty remained as prizes in his art union and eight others were later offered in separate raffles, he could have sold, at most, seven paintings from his first exhibition. On 20 October he was offering entrance to his exhibition at the reduced price of 6d (previously 1s, catalogue 3d). The following January its management was taken over by W. and F. Ford who showed the works gratis in their shop. There were now 500 tickets at a guinea each and everyone was to get a prize from the twenty paintings and 480 engravings offered. By early June the draw still had not taken place, although it was being definitely announced for the 18th. No list of winners seems to have been published but some final draw must have eventuated. In 1857 John Fairfax exhibited Stevens’s The May Boy in a loan exhibition at the Sydney Mechanics Institute, presumably An English Peasant Boy Selling May valued at 40 guineas in the art union. In December 1850 Kern and Mader were raffling five more paintings by Stevens (fifty tickets at 2 guineas each), including Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man .
By June 1850 Stevens had moved from Bridge Street to 235 Elizabeth Street. He remained at this address until 14 March 1851 when the auctioneer George Lloyd announced that he was selling Stevens’s household effects that day. Stevens was about to return to Europe in the Tamar . The furniture was described as 'very superior … principally English made, comprising the usual requisites for a family of respectability’, suggesting that he had been intending to settle in Sydney with his family. His effects also included a bound collection of engravings of The Best Pictures of the Best Masters (all proofs before letters) and several loose engravings after Landseer and other British and European painters.
Also offered for sale was a large apparatus for showing dissolving views, and a magic lantern and slides stated to have been originally the property of Captain Owen Stanley . As well, there was 'A Photogenic Apparatus, for taking likenesses either in DAGUERREOTYPE on metal, or in CALOTYPE on paper’, which had cost £40 in London, suggesting that Stevens had some expertise as a photographer. If he had brought out the camera in 1849 (as is implied in the advertisement) it is early evidence of calotype awareness in the colony. William Hetzer introduced the process professionally to Sydney only in 1850, according to Davies and Stanbury, at about the same time that Joseph Docker was producing salted paper prints as a hobby. But Stevens’s London paintings generated such publicity that any local photographic activities went unreported. He may simply have taken photographs as an aid for his paintings, as Marshall Claxton is reputed to have done soon afterwards. (Claxton may even have purchased Stevens’s camera at the auction.)
After his return to London, Stevens exhibited at the 1852 exhibitions of the Royal Society and the Society of British Artists from an address in Regent’s Park. He continued to exhibit regularly with the London art societies until 1865. No works from his colonial sojourn are known, nor indeed does any serious painting activity seem likely, given the problems Stevens had in disposing of those he had brought out with him.
- Writers:
- Lennon, Jane
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
