Bradley Stevens grew up in Westport, Connecticut—a town stacked with New York artists, writers, and musicians—before coming to Washington, D.C., to study fine arts at George Washington University. Then, a summer painting program in Brittany, France, sealed his path. He went on to earn his MFA, teach as an adjunct professor for 18 years at GWU and Georgetown, and spend five years as a registered copyist at the National Gallery of Art, returning three days a week to study the techniques of the great masters firsthand.
That obsessive apprenticeship became the foundation of everything he does today—from serene Virginia landscapes to figurative cityscapes, historical figures, portraits of luminaries and leaders, and his ongoing and remarkable Museum Studies series, which captures the quiet, almost spiritual moment when a person stands before a work of art and is changed by it.
As one of the country’s leading realist painters, his work hangs in corporate and private collections—even the U.S. Capitol. He now lives in Gainesville on 10 acres at the end of a dead-end road, with his artist wife Patricia; Claira, their Labrador retriever; and two cats, Jo Jo and Silvie. We sat down to talk about light, landscape, and the one painting he’d take home if he could.
Madeline Mayhood: You’ve lived in Northern Virginia for 45 years. How has the place shaped your work?…