Template:POTD/2023-06-06
The Interior of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel Near Potsdam is the title of two oil-on-canvas paintings by Carl Blechen, completed between 1832 and 1834. Both depict four odalisques as they relax in a palm house (which was destroyed by fire in 1880) at the royal retreat of Pfaueninsel near Berlin, but have different angles of view and compositions. The works were commissioned by King Frederick William III of Prussia and are now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Art Institute of Chicago, with an 1832 color study for the work found in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. This picture shows the Chicago version of the painting, which was gifted by Frederick William to his daughter Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia. It remained in the Russian imperial collection until around 1917, became part of a Swiss collection around 1920, and was owned by private collectors prior to its purchase by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996.Painting credit: Carl Blechen