Chez soi 

Curator: Alfred Stevens' "Chez soi," or "At Home," presents a moment of quiet contemplation. There's a stillness to it that immediately grabs you. Editor: It certainly has that dreamy, detached quality characteristic of a lot of late 19th-century painting. Looking closely at the application of oil-paint across this canvas, it seems the social milieu really dictates both form and content. Curator: Absolutely. Note the details – the sitter’s dress, which seems constructed of swathes of layered light fabric, likely imported at great expense. Editor: And we must note that her luxurious interior decor includes even another framed artwork hung in the background! That landscape painting within the painting is a clever commentary. The upper classes become each others subject matter for private contemplation, but divorced from physical labor in the manufacturing process. Curator: Exactly! It echoes the detached gaze of the woman, looking out at the implied leisure of what appears to be the Tuileries Garden just beyond the window, a view framed, quite literally, by draped fabric in rich tones. Editor: The architecture glimpsed, I imagine, must have been understood to signify both power and wealth at the time. Did you notice she delicately holds a fan in hand? Her world feels crafted to be a certain image in front of a quickly modernizing landscape. Curator: Absolutely, it’s about curated moments of bourgeois comfort and aestheticism during an era of intense industrial production and socio-political change. The fan, the dress, the pose–they are all carefully chosen and presented to create this impression. Editor: And I keep considering that dress; the making of it, the source of fabrics used. It points back towards issues around industrialization and consumerism during the era. Her "chez soi," as it were, comes at a social cost. Curator: Yes, her tranquil interior belies so much hidden labour elsewhere in the world that would allow for her lifestyle. Ultimately, “Chez soi” gives us a carefully constructed image ripe for broader interpretation. Editor: It definitely provides a window into the gilded cage of a privileged existence.