The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired Pierre Louis Alexandre, a painting from 1879–1880 by Swedish artist and designer Karin Bergöö Larsson (1859–1928). The acquisition broadens the art-historical narratives of our 19th-century European collection. This painting is on view in gallery 81 on the Main Floor of the West Building.

In her portrait of Pierre Louis Alexandre, Larsson depicts a thoughtful, powerful man. This extraordinary painting, likely done while she was a student at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, is more than a study of a Black model. Rather than “orientalizing” the figure with costumes and jewelry from distant lands—a common practice during this time that reinforced racial stereotypes—Larsson presents Alexandre’s individuality with great care and insight. By placing him close to the picture plane, Larsson emphasizes Alexandre’s physicality, even as his far-off gaze suggests his mind is elsewhere.

“This marvelous painting is all the more remarkable for it being, essentially, a student work. Karin Bergöö Larsson was clearly an extremely talented painter, although she produced few pictures in her short painting career,” said Mary Morton, curator and head of the department of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

Pierre Louis Alexandre, the sitter in this painting, was a dock worker born in French Guyana. He arrived in Stockholm in 1863, likely as a stowaway on a trading vessel. An artist’s model at the Royal Swedish Academy from 1878 to 1903, he is depicted in dozens of surviving works by many artists at the time. Alexandre lived in Sweden until his death in 1905.

According to scholar Monica L. Miller, associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Alexandre is “thought to be the most depicted Black sitter in pre-20th century European art. . . . This portrait of Alexandre is unique and important not only because it depicts him as a person and not merely a model, but also because it forms part of the beginning of a record of Black lives in a globalized African diaspora, even in a place as unexpected as Sweden. As such, ‘Black presence’ becomes historical connection and begins the process of reckoning.”

Larsson began her artistic training at the Arts and Crafts School (Slöjdskolan) in Stockholm, Sweden, and then attended the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1882 she moved to the international artists’ colony in the village of Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, where she met the Swedish designer Carl Larsson. They were married the next year. Not only did she collaborate with her husband, but as his primary model, she was frequently depicted in his paintings. Although she ended her painting career at her husband’s request after they married, Larsson designed and wove many of the textiles used in their home, embroidered, and designed clothes for herself and their children.