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signed oil on canvas 29 by 23 1/2 in. 73.7 by 59.7 cm. Stevens, along with Bracquemond, Whistler, Manet, and the Goncourts, was one of the originators of the later nineteenth century enthusiasm for Japonisme. He was an avid collector as well as a painter, and owned numerous oriental rugs, textiles, vases and other works of art. Many of these appear in his paintings, such as the carpet, screen and elephant figure in L'Inde a Paris. This painting is one of three with the same title. Here and in one of the other two, exhibited at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, a woman gazes at an oriental figure of a mounted elephant. The woman wears the same grey dress in both paintings, with the jewel-encrusted elephant curio set on a table covered with a rich oriental carpet. Reviewing the L'Inde a Paris of the Exposition Universelle, Camille Lemonnier said that the subject matter of this set of paintings "indicates a total revolution in habits, tastes and feelings; a new ideal appears with this exotic art, an enormous jewel encrusted with carbuncles, which suddenly appears at the frontier of the West; and the contemplative Parisian in front of a chiseled ivory figure, who, in the painting of that name, seems to drink with her pearl-like eyes the beauty of the enigmatic object, expresses well the passionate curiosity which animated the spirit of every one." We are grateful to Professor William A. Coles for his assistance in the cataloguing of this work. Provenance: William H. Stewart (sale, American Art Galleries, Chickering Hall, New York, February 3-4, 1898, No. 51, illustrated (As Woman and Elephant) Boussod, Valadon & Cie., Paris Galerie George Petit, Paris Charles Guasco, Paris H. Schickman Gallery Mrs. Deane Johnson, New York Exhibited: Paris, Ecole des Beaux Arts, Exposition Alfred Stevens, 1900. This painting and another of the same name, both in the collection of Charles Guasco, appeared in the exhibition as Nos. 74 and 78 Literature: Annie Grenez and Robert Rousseau, Retrospective Alfred Stevens (exhibition catalogue), Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi, 1975 William A. Coles, Alfred Stevens (exhibition catalogue), Ann Arbor, 1977, p. 31.