WESTLAKE, TX.- Gallery 19C is organizing an exhibition The French Fashionista: Dressing the Women of Nineteenth-Century Paris on view from November 12 until January 31, 2026. The exhibition showcases how fashion played a central role in French painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. From delicate day dresses that appeared like fluffy white clouds to bejeweled and elaborately embellished evening gowns, the new fashions were manna to the artists of the period. Beautiful dresses, in a rainbow of colors and textures, provided a new and continuous source of artistic inspiration. In other words, what better way for an artist to display their virtuosity than in capturing the sumptuous textures of velvet and silk? The new Haussmannian Paris - the Paris we know today - with its wide boulevards and expansive parks, provided both the backdrop and catalyst for the splendid fashions on display during this period. What were the rapidly shifting styles and silhouettes of fashion? What did the daily wardrobe changes of a fashionable “Parisienne” involve, whether at home in Paris or on holiday? And where did French women shop?

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Alfred Stevens’ Le Salon du Peintre. Painted in 1880, it depicts the lavish salon of Afred Stevens’ Paris home at 65, rue des Martyrs, where the artist and his wife regularly hosted friends and fellow artists. Stevens frequently used his home as a setting for his scenes of modern life, drawing upon the rich array of furnishings and objets d’art that surrounded him. So, the story goes, during a visit to Stevens’ studio, the American industrialist William Kissam Vanderbilt reportedly insisted on acquiring Le Salon du Peintre, which the artist had intended to keep as a memento of his elegant home on the rue des Martyrs, then destined for demolition to make way for a new street, subsequently named in his honor. Hoping to discourage the sale of Le Salon du Peintre, Stevens named the extraordinary sum of 50,000 francs, only to have Vanderbilt readily agree to the price. By comparison, his friend Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère would sell for a mere 5,800 francs four years later! Speaking of values, Le Salon du Peintre holds the auction record for a work by Alfred Stevens, having sold for $1,650,000 in 1998.

Dr. Justine De Young, a leading authority on French fashion and art and author of The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris (2025) has contributed insightful essays to the catalogue and generously shared her expertise throughout the planning of the exhibition. She is also currently working on a catalogue raisonné of the French painter Louise Abbéma.