The interior of the palm house

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The interior of the palm house (Carl Blechen)
The interior of the palm house
Carl Blechen , 1832
Oil painting on paper, drawn onto canvas
64 × 56 cm
Old National Gallery , Berlin

The interior of the palm house is the title of five realistic paintings by Carl Blechen from the years 1832 to 1834, which show the interior of the palm house on Berlin's Pfaueninsel. Four of them were commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. Two of the works are owned by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg , both of which have been on display since 2011 in the New Pavilion in the park at Charlottenburg Palace . Another picture, a preliminary study, is exhibited in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin , another preliminary study in the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the fifth painting in the Art Institute of Chicago .

description

Preliminary study in the Hamburger Kunsthalle
Painting in the Art Institute of Chicago

The two pictures in Berlin and Hamburg are made using the technique of oil painting on paper, which is laid on canvas, and have the dimensions 64 × 56 cm. They serve as preliminary studies for the foundation's two paintings, which are painted directly on the canvas and are significantly larger in the 74 × 65 cm format. A similar third painting, format 135 × 126 cm, has been in the Art Institute of Chicago since 1996 .

Carl Blechen presented the view into the middle of the palm house with the large fan palm Latania borbonica , which was supposed to come from the island of Réunion , and which dominated the composition as an arabesque pictorial element from two different angles. In the flooded by sunlight hall-like greenhouse he added as window dressing a woman figures, used as odalisques should highlight the desired exotic atmosphere. Two of the figures originally had bare breasts, but this took offense, so that they appear covered in the paintings. A marble pagoda from Bengal set up in the palm house , a piece of booty from the English, inspired sheet metal for these figures, so that the illusion of an oriental, erotically charged milieu was created, which was in line with the ideas of the exotic at the time. According to the art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan , Carl Blechen's palm house pictures are given a “peculiarly dazzling, even ambiguous reality that is in contrast to the rational construction of perspective and the unbridled fantasy of the vegetation.” Blechen also succeeds in creating the illusion in these pictures of scent, warmth and moisture, which was noted and positively received by the critics of the time (Spenersche Zeitung from 1834 on the occasion of the academy exhibition). Originally, Blechen wanted, as in many of his other paintings, to make the pillars of the palm house more filigree than they actually were in order to make the house appear taller and lighter, but the king insisted on the correct representation of the proportions.

Alexander von Humboldt owned a lithograph of one of the palm house pictures made by Julius Tempeltey . He had made a copy in 1844 for the Verein der Kunstfreunde in Prussen .

History and background

With the completion of the palm house, the king's desire for a pictorial representation awoke. The architectural painter Eduard Gaertner would actually have come into question, but the king preferred Blechen, who had experience with stage sets and theater decorations, and in 1832 ordered the interior views of the Palm House from him. Blechen first made two preliminary studies, oil paint on paper. The two final paintings were not finished until June 1834. In September of that year, they were shown in the Berlin academy exhibition and received positively. But he made a third, larger painting, which the king also bought later. The required purchase price was 100 Friedrich d'or per painting , but that was too much for the king. It was only after Karl Friedrich Schinkel's intervention that Blechen received the requested amount. Schinkel pointed out the high amount of work that was necessary for the lifelike depiction of the plants, and the associated studies by the painter on tropical plants. The vegetation in the palm house made sheet metal in the finished paintings more lush than it was in reality. Later, however, the dominant fan palm grew so high that a glass dome had to be placed on the palm house in 1845.

Provenance

The two preliminary studies in the painting technique oil on paper came from Blechen to the Berlin art collector and gallery owner Karl Ludwig Kuhtz. In 1898 the auction house Rudolph Lepke auctioned the Kuhtz collection, until March 1898 this sheet was in the Berlin art dealership Amsler und Ruthardt, after which it became part of the Nationalgalerie's holdings. The picture in the Hamburger Kunsthalle was also with Karl Ludwig Kuhtz, was also up for auction by Lepke in Berlin, but stayed with Anna Kuhtz. In 1901 the Hamburger Kunsthalle bought it.

The finished paintings were after the academy exhibition in 1834 by King Friedrich-Wilhelm III. bought and have since been owned by today's Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation. However, Blechen subsequently delivered another painting for the exhibition, which is in a larger format. This picture also went to the king, who probably gave it to his daughter Charlotte , who took it with her as Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of Russia . After the October Revolution , it was owned by the Russian state, came to a Swiss collection from around 1920, then to the Munich art dealer Daxer & Marschall and was with James Mackinnon, London, until 1996. Since then, the picture has been part of the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the catalog of the exhibition Carl Blechen. Between Romanticism and Realism in 1990, this picture by Helmut Börsch-Supan is still believed to be “lost”. Birgit Verwiebe, the curator of Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie, writes that the king also intended to donate the other two paintings to his daughter Charlotte.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • May to October 1886: Jubilee exhibition of the Royal Academy of the Arts (58th exhibition), Berlin (No. 2259. Palm house study, state property)
  • January to May 1906: Exhibition of German art from the period 1775–1875 (exhibition of the century), Königliche National-Galerie, Berlin (No. 99 and No. 108)

Lepke art auction

  • 1898: Exhibition for the auction of the paintings of the Kuhtz Gallery by Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus (No. 42: The Palm House on the Pfaueninsel and No. 43: Different view of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel ).

Berlin preliminary study

Hamburg preliminary study

  • 1901 and 1907: Existing exhibition in the Kunsthalle Hamburg

Version in the Art Institute of Chicago

  • So far only in the Berlin academy exhibition in 1834

literature

  • 40. Sheets. Palm house . In: Richard Graul, Richard Stettiner (ed.): The Museum, a guide to enjoying works of fine art . Wilhelm Spemann, Berlin / Stuttgart 1896, p. 79 and panel 40 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive , Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Gabriele Radecke: The palm house on the Peacock Island . In: From writing to storytelling: a text-genetic study of Theodor Fontane's "L'Adultera" . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2052-9 , p. 134 ff . ( books.google.de - excerpt).
  • Kilian Heck : The picture as a document or as art? Franz Kugler's magazine Museum and the reviewed paintings by Carl Belchen . In: Franz Theodor Kugler: German art historian and Berlin poet . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004645-7 , pp. 173-185, here 179-185 ( core.ac.uk [PDF; 7.3 MB ]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inside of the palm house on the Pfaueninsel side of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.
  2. ↑ Markus Jurziczek: Guide to the Pfaueninsel near Potsdam 2005, p. 6 ( berliner-verkehrsseiten.de PDF).
  3. ↑ Alexander von Humboldt's art estate which was published on September 17, 1860 and the following. Days [...] in Berlin ... is to be auctioned . Berlin 1860, p. 11 , No. 211: The Palm House on Pfaueninsel ( Text Archive - Internet Archive ).
  4. ^ Georg Kaspar Nagler: Tempeltei, Friedrich Julius . In: New general artist Lexicon or messages from the life and works of painters, sculptors, architects, engravers, die cutter, lithographer, illustrator, Medals and Ivory, etc . tape 18 : Surugue, PL - Torre, G . Fleischmann, Munich 1848, p. 170–172 , No. 26, Das Palmenhaus on the Pfaueninsel , p. 171 ( books.google.de ).
  5. ^ A b Helmut Börsch-Supan : Carl Blechen. Between romance and realism. Exhibition catalog of the Berlin National Gallery, Prestel-Verlag 1990, ISBN 3-7913-1084-4 , p. 123 f.
  6. ↑ a b Rudolph Lepke's art auctions house (ed.): Catalog of the gallery Kuhtz Berlin oil paintings, watercolors and drawings of newer, as well as some older first class masters . Lepke, Berlin 1898, p. 30–33 , No. 42: The palm house on the Pfaueninsel and No. 43: Another view of the palm house on the Pfaueninsel ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  7. ↑ The interior of the palm house - picture & study smb-digital.de.
  8. ^ Carl Blechen interior view of the former palm house on Pfaueninsel near Potsdam, 1832/34 hamburger-kunsthalle.de.
  9. ^ The Interior of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel Near Potsdam artic.edu.
  10. ^ Historical section - Karl Blechen . In: Illustrated catalog: Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin in the state exhibition building (58) . Verlag Comtoir, Berlin 1886, p. 321 ( digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de ).
  11. ^ Exhibition of German art from the period 1775–1875 in the Royal National Gallery, Berlin 1906 . F. Bruckmann, Munich 1906, p. 28–31 ( Figure  - Internet Archive ).
  12. ↑ The interior of the palm house on the Pfaueninsel image index
  13. ↑ Hello World. Revision of a collection website for the exhibition.
  14. ↑ Overview of the currently exhibited paintings and sculptures . Lütcke, Hamburg 1907, p. 66 and 122 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  15. ↑ artic.edu