Searching for Pierre Louis Alexandre

This time last year, we published an article about the 19th-century artist’s model Pierre Louis Alexandre. After escaping to Sweden from a life of slavery in French Guiana, Alexandre went on to be the model for a generation of Swedish artists; making him the most painted Black sitter in pre-20th-century European art. In response to our article, we were contacted by Mats Werner, who has been studying and cataloguing the paintings of Alexandre for decades. Werner’s book (printed in Swedish, but available online with automatic translation) ‘Svarte Peder / Negern Petterson – från Cayenne till Nationalmuseum’ was published in 2021.

We are delighted to publish a new article by Werner, written exclusively for Athena Art Foundation, with more information about Alexandre’s life and the paintings of him, exploring his importance as an example of how POCs interacted with the art world and carved out a space for themselves despite their oppression. This is the first time that much of this information has been made available in English, and it also includes a handful of previously unseen paintings…

(Written by Esme Garlake on behalf of Athena Art Foundation, April 2023)