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The Interior of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel Near Potsdam

Four women with musical instruments lounge in a massive garden courtyard.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Four women with musical instruments lounge in a massive garden courtyard.

Date:

1834

Artist:

Carl Blechen (German, 1798–1840)

About this artwork

Lush palms and overgrown greenery dominate this view of the Palm House, a country estate designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel to display the Prussian royals’ collection of tropical plants. This painting plays with the boundaries between architecture and nature, imagination and reality: vines curl around soaring columns and bowed fronds evoke archways. Carl Blechen populated his dazzlingly specific place-portrait with a leisure scene derived from colonialist fantasies of non-European women. The artist dressed the figures in rich textiles that echo the building’s colors and motifs, as if he considered them an extension of the décor.

Status

On View, Gallery 221

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Carl Blechen

Title

The Interior of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel Near Potsdam

Place

Germany (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1834

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

135 × 126 cm (52 1/2 × 50 in.); Framed: 155 × 145.5 cm (61 × 57 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Through prior acquisitions of the George F. Harding Collection; L.L. and A.S. Coburn and Alexander A. McKay endowments; through prior gift of William Wood Prince; through prior acquisitions of the Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Endowment

Reference Number

1996.388

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/144969/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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