The Exotic Trinket immerses the viewer into the intimate world of the 19th century fashionable women in their ultimate stylishness. In a mise-en-scène of astonishing technical virtuosity, where the figure, the furniture and the various objects are arranged in a symphony, Stevens recreated a picture of opulence. Stevens’ conspicuous attachment to the tradition of Flemish and Dutch genre painting, where emphasis is given to technical precision, unparalleled realism of fabrics and objects, emanates from our painting. Dressed in the finest satins, velvets and silks, the female figure incarnates the upper-class lady type. In a way, Stevens was the fashion photographer of his time and it is highly possible that he borrowed the black dress from Pauline von Metternich, the influential wife of the Austrian ambassador and promoter of the English haute couture designer, Charles Frederick Worth. Our female figure is however much more than a fashion icon. While her graceful manner and outfit signifies a social status, her engaged pose adds a sense of inwardness. Owing to the Netherlandish painters such as Johannes Vermeer, the figure’s beauty and somewhat superficiality belies a moment of self-reflection which is conveyed through her interaction with the striking statue of an Indian elephant. In fact, the elephant assumes a place of primary significance, thanks both to its careful rendering and to its prominent position in the composition. As the focus of the woman’s gaze, it is the key to unlock the figure’s state of mind: this beautiful young woman is daydreaming of faraway places. In Exotic Trinket, the viewer accompanies the female figure in her daydream to India and more broadly to the Orient, as the mishmash of objects from various countries suggests: a Japanese screen, a Persian carpet and a statue of an Indian elephant. As for the elephant made of wood, ivory and colored glass, it was part of Stevens’ personal collection and featured in at least two other paintings all comprised in the series he called India in Paris. Our Exotic Trinket, its companion also titled Exotic Trinket (the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) were reunited with their elephant for the first time since their creation in the most recent retrospective of the artist in 2009. The elephant also provides an understanding of Stevens’s influences and more particularly his infatuation of the Orient which he shared with many of his contemporaries since the discovery of Japanese and exotic artefacts in the 1860s. Stevens became an avid collector who filled his home with furniture, screens, parasols, kimonos, masks, fans and other accessories from several periods, styles and countries. His house, with its Chinese room with furnishings from the imperial palace in Beijing was even nicknamed a “grotto of the intimate” by his friend Stéphane Mallarmé (S. Mallarmé, “Lettres sur l’exposition international de Londres” in Œuvres complètes, eds. B. Marchal, Paris, 2003, II, p. 366). In terms of composition, our Exotic Trinket is extremely modern and a perfect example of how Stevens incorporated this new trend in art into his own work. In addition, our painting’s sense of two-dimensionality and emphasis on color contrasts suggests the heavy influence of Japanese prints, as Stevens himself explained: “color makes the painting.” (A. Stevens, Impressions sur la peinture, Paris 1886, VIII and XII). Understanding the use color not for its sole ability to mimic nature but also for its emotive qualities makes Stevens a pioneer who paved the way to the experiments of avant-gardists artists like Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin.