Moments private, moments very public - four paintings by Tetar van Elven

Bal Travesti chez le Baron Lycklama, Villa Escarras, Cannes, 1874.

The host, the wealthy Orientalist, Tinco Martinus Lycklama à Nijeholt, stands right of center, his hand on his hip.

Fête de nuit aux Tuileries, le 10 juin 1867, 1867. This soirée occurred during the Exposition Universelle in Paris that year.

The Empress Eugénie is on the arm of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia while, behind, Napoléon III is engaged in conversation with King Wilhelm I of Prussia.

The baptism of the future King Carlos I of Portugal, 1863.

The infant was baptised with the names Carlos Fernando Luís Maria Víctor Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Xavier Francisco de Assis José Simão.

King Karl XV & IV of Sweden and Norway, Queen Lovisa, and their daughter Princess Lovisa, the future consort of Frederik VIII of Denmark 1862.

An engraving of the French Emperor Napoléon III is on the wall behind them, and what looks to be a painting of the first Napoléon over the mantle.

Above Princess Lovisa is a portrait of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, the stepson of Napoléon I and King Karl's maternal grandfather.

Fête de nuit aux Tuileries, le 10 juin 1867, by Pierre Tetar van Elven, 1867

This painting commemorates a fête given on the occasion of the visit of foreign sovereigns to the International Exposition of 1867. Walking in the garden, the Empress Eugénie is on the arm of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia while, behind them, the French Emperor Napoléon III is engaged in conversation with King Wilhelm I of Prussia. Only four years later, France will lie defeated - her emperor in German custody, her empress fled to England - and Wilhelm of Prussia will be proclaimed Emperor of a united Germany in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, while the venerable Tuileries Palace will be a burned out shell.

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Pierre Henri Théodore (Petrus Henricus Theodorus) Tetar van Elven (30 August 1828, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean - 5 January 1908, Milan), Dutch painter, watercolorist, and etcher.

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The dramatic staircase connecting the gardens with the salle des Maréchaux - the palace's primary ballroom - was a temporary construction, built for the occasion. I was very happy to see this painting - not at all technically adept, but very evocative, and which I've known in reproduction since childhood - at the recent Tuileries Gardens exhibition at the Portland Art Museum.