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Empress Alexandra Feodorovna's Sitting Room, Cottage Palace, St. Petersberg, Russia

Eduard Petrovich Hauca. 1855

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
New York, United States

Interior view of a small room decorated in the Neo-Gothic style. At left a folding screen ornamented with quatrefoils and colored panels partially obscures a portrait of a woman in a heavy gilt frame. At right a similar screen is positioned near a small day bed above which a circular portrait in a gothic-style frame hangs. A desk, chair and ornamental wastebasket occupy the center of the room, just in front of a large window ornamented with stained glass panels of green and yellow and a small replica of a painting of the Assumption of the Virgin.

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  • Title: Empress Alexandra Feodorovna's Sitting Room, Cottage Palace, St. Petersberg, Russia
  • Creator: Eduard Petrovich Hau
  • Creator Lifespan: 1807/1888
  • Date Created: ca. 1855
  • Type: Drawing
  • Rights: Thaw Collection
  • Medium: Brush and watercolor on white wove paper
  • Viewing Notes: This view features a room in the Gothic Revival cottage built between 1826-1829 in the park of the Peterhof Palace near St. Petersburg for Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The furniture was probably made by Peter Gambs. Pointed-arched designs on screens, the wastepaper basket in the center foreground and the chandelier are in the style of Pugin. There is exquisite detail in this rendering, reflected in the architectural tracery, ubiquitous in the Gothic Revival style during the Victorian period. A view of the sea is glimpsed through the window.
  • Signed: Lower left: Evd Hau
  • Provenance: Eugene V. Thaw Collection; Joseph-Francois Heim, Paris
  • Paper Support: White wove paper
  • Inscribed: Lower center margin: Petit cabinet de maman au Cottag.
  • Exhibitions: New York, NY, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. House Proud: Nineteenth-Century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection, August 12, 2008-January 25, 2009.
  • Dimensions: Old frame H x W x D: 45.7 x 39.4 x 1.9 cm (18 x 15 1/2 x 3/4 in.)Sheet: 21.2 x 24.4 cm (8 3/8 x 9 5/8 in.)
  • Bibliography: Charlotte Gere and Floramae McCarron-Cates, " House Proud, From Amateur to Professional and from Grand to Comfortable, " in Gail S. Davidson et al., House Proud, Nineteenth-century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection (New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 2008), 45-46, fig. 21; 94, pl. 23.See also Piotrovsky, Korshunova, Semionova, The Winter Palace - St. Petersburg (Paris 1994, St. Petersburg 1995) with 84 watercolors by Eduard Hau.See Imperial Palaces in Russia (London 1992) by Prince Michael of Greece for a description of life in Peterhof Cottage and a watercolor by Hau of "The Large Study."
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

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