The Palm House on Peacock Island was built from 1829 to 1831 according to designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It was made of glass and wood and was designed in a style that was partly Indian and partly Moorish. King Frederick William III used the Palm House to house his large palm collection, which he had acquired from a private collection in Paris. The palm house, which was heated with wood, was destroyed by fire in the night of 19 to 20 May 1880 and was never rebuilt. Today, only stone posts not far from the Peacock Island House remind us of this special building.
Carl Blechen was commissioned by the king to paint two interior views of the Palm House between 1832 and 1834. Today, the two paintings are on display in the New Pavilion at Charlottenburg Palace. Blechen depicted the impressive architecture and the large collection of plants with their lush foliage in a particularly lifelike depth. Like a stage designer, he inserted female figures into the scenes, whose costumes were intended to evoke Indian or Arabian dress. Blechen thus created a dense and deliberately exoticising atmosphere. The images are an expression of the European and unreflected longing of the time for a supposedly pure, innocent and paradisiacal island life.
Nothing is known about the women depicted, their possible origins, biographies or identities.
