It Just Needs A LITTLE PAINT

Two centuries before influencers began obsessively documenting their terrazzo-filled condos, royals caught the craze for palace paintings.

- KATY KELLEHER

The practice, which began in the 1800s with technical drawings of scholarly libraries, became colorful and nuanced in the hands of skilled artists like Vasily Sadovnikov, who painted Russian palaces for Empress Alexandra. (It is thanks to Sadovnikov that images of the doomed empire exist, such as the grand interiors of the Winter Palace.) Empress Josephine of France and Queen Victoria also commissioned portraits of their palaces, Victoria becoming a voracious collector. Aristocrats everywhere hopped on the trend, as interior design books like Edith Wharton’s 1897 The Decoration of Houses started celebrating the pastime of peeping into the (intricately styled) lives of others.