A newly acquired portrait illuminates the story of a 19th-century life model

It’s 1879 in Stockholm at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, and a studio portraiture class is in session. A group of women art students assemble in a circle, readying their painting stations, eager to construct an interpretation of today’s subject: Pierre Louis Alexandre. A life model who unassumingly left his mark on history, he was likely the most frequently depicted Black sitter in pre-20th-century European art. 

For a Black man in Europe during the late 19th century, earning income as a life model was far from conventional. Although the system of chattel slavery had been abolished in recent decades, Black communities were still navigating immense hardship and marginalization. How, then, did Alexandre wind up being paid handsomely to pose for dozens of Sweden’s leading artists? Read on, in this week’s Foyer feature, linked HERE.