- NameAnton Stevens
- Sexmale
- Nationality/DatesGerman, born 1618, dead 1672
BiographyLandscape painter and draughtsman. Anton
Stevens II was a son of the Flemish landscape painter
and draughtsman Pieter Stevens II, who, after a presumed
spell in Rome in 1590–1591, was active in
Bohemia, as court painter to the Emperor Rudolf II
at Prague from 1594 until the emperor’s death in
1612, later possibly also in the employ of the
Stadtholder, Prince Charles of Liechtenstein, from
1620 until 1624. Anton probably trained with his
father, whose rather eclectic Mannerist style he emulated,
especially in his drawings of the 1630s. In 1644
Anton was admitted to the painters’ guild in Prague,
becoming an alderman in the same year. In 1652 he
was made a custodian of the royal art collections, and
two years later, in 1654, he was raised to the nobility,
taking the name Von Steinfels. His sons, Paul Anton
and Johann Jakob, were both painters at Prague, the
latter becoming one of the most important muralists
in Bohemia during the Late Baroque period.
The majority of Stevens the Younger’s paintings,
executed during the 1660s, can be found in the Premonstratensian
monastery of Strahov in Prague.
Beside the strong influence of his father’s landscapes
on Stevens’ stylistic development, influences by artists
in the Mannerist court circles of Prague have been
noted, for example that of Bartholomeus Spranger.
Stevens’ fantastic landscapes, with their high horizons
and minute rendering of details and light effects, are
strongly indebted to those of an earlier generation of
Flemish landscapists that included artists such as Paul
Bril and Hendrick van Cleve III.