How 19th-Century Painters Captured Palace Interiors in Watercolor and Oil

Key facts

• Luigi Premazzi (1814–1891) was an Italian watercolorist trained in Milan who painted the mansion of Baron Alexander von Stieglitz and died in Istanbul at 77.
• Maurice Lobre (1862–1951) studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, first exhibited at the Salon in 1882 at age 20, and painted interiors of the Palace of Versailles including the King’s Library and the Salon of Madame Adelaide.
• Walter Gay (1856–1937) painted The Boucher Room and The Fragonard Room from Henry Clay Frick’s New York residence; the works were commissioned by Helen Clay Frick and are now in the Frick Collection in Pittsburgh, PA.
• Ludwig Deutsch (1855–1935) was a 19th-century Orientalist who painted detailed Near Eastern interiors, including a connoisseur surrounded by objects such as musical instruments, an inlaid chest, a brass ewer, and a porcelain vase.
• Edward Hau (1807–1888) attended the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1830, became a member of the Imperial Academy of Art in Saint Petersburg, and painted watercolors of the Winter Palace and Peterhof Palace.
• Hau’s precise works were used in restoration efforts of the Great Gatchina Palace in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, after its destruction during World War II; he moved to Estonia in 1880.
• Carl Blechen (1798–1840) painted the greenhouse of Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia on the Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island), designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel to house the king’s palm collection.
• Blechen’s greenhouse painting was among his final works; he showed signs of severe mental derangement and died in 1836.