La Lettre (1882) — Alfred Stevens Postcard

A young woman in pale lavender-grey silk sits absorbed in a letter, her concentration so complete that the small table beside her — a blue-and-gold floral cloth, a ruby-glass vase holding a few blue cornflowers — seems to recede behind her. Signed and dated "A Stevens '82," this is one of Alfred Stevens's most quietly intimate reading scenes.

"La Lettre" (The Letter) returns to a subject he revisited across his career: correspondence as a private theatre of feeling, read behind a closed door. The 1882 date places it in his mature Paris period, when his brushwork loosened without losing its precision on silk and glass. Printed on 350 g/m² cardstock, this card suits a correspondence-themed postcrossing send, a gift for a devoted letter-writer, or a pairing with its companion piece in the collection — the writing-desk "Lettre" scene — and the wider Alfred Stevens postcard collection.