View of the Palm House on the Peacock-Island

Exuding botanical lushness and concealing romanticized Asiatic women, this lithograph is a close copy of the Art Institute’s Carl Blechen painting on view nearby in gallery 221. The print and painting exhibit the collection of valuable palm trees acquired in 1830 by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and housed in a structure designed by visionary architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to incorporate fragments of an Indian temple. The building, located on the grounds of the Sanssouci Palace on Peacock Island, near Berlin, burned down in 1880.