Collecting for study purposes

“I regard my cabinet solely as a man of letters regards his library, namely, as a means of instruction.” With these few words in a letter of 1762, Margravine Karoline Luise underlines her motives as a collector and the character of her collection. The description is the key to the extraordinary purchase of Pierre’s nude studies.
The approximately 200 paintings, recorded in an inventory after the Margravine’s death, had been shown to only a few visitors during her lifetime. The works served first and foremost Karoline Louise’s own passion and her studies. Her interest was not only restricted to enjoying the finesse of masterly painting as a connoisseur. She also did this in order to perfect her own artistic work.

Académie instead of Academy

Instructed artistically in her childhood and youth at the Darmstadt Palace, she enjoyed lessons from painting teachers throughout her lifetime. The most famous among them was Jean-Etienne Liotard. However, academic training as an artist was denied her because she was a woman.

In the end, the persistent princess, thirsty for knowledge, not only brought a naked man into her house with Pierre’s paintings, but also a piece of the academy, quite literally: nude studies were also called “Académies” from the 18th century onwards, since they were the core of an artist’s professional training. Probably created as work samples during Pierre’s time as a student in Rome, the two male nudes found their way to Karlsruhe a good twenty years later, when Pierre was already a highly respected artist whose painting was even compared to that of Rembrandt. Whether Karoline Luise drew from them is not known — but one may assume she did.