Washington’s National Gallery of Art (NGA) recently acquired a portrait of Pierre Louis Alexandre painted by Swedish artist and designer Karin Bergoo Larsson in 1879–80, while she was studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm.
Around 40 portraits of art academy model Alexandre exist—and Bergoo Larsson’s is the best known. Many of the portraits show him dressed in exotic costumes, as per the Orientalist style of painting that flourished in the 19th century. This was when Western artists delighted in depicting—sometimes realistic and often fantastical—everyday scenes and landscapes of the East.
