Enfilade

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel after Samuel van Hoogstraten, Boy with a Hat in a Front Door, detail, 1763, etching, roulette in brown and red (Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, Christoph Müller Stiftung / Kilian Beutel).

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From the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:

Encounters: ‘I Am All That!’ | Christoph Müller’s Gift, Part 2

Begegnungen: Das alles bin ich! | Die Schenkung Christoph Müller II

Kupferstichkabinett at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, 26 August — 30 November 2025

The exhibition I Am All That! presents the generous gift of some 200 works that art collector Christoph Müller has made to the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings). The works on paper—drawings, prints, and watercolours—not only show a broad panorama of visual themes spanning five centuries, but also reflect the influences on the collector and his interests. One aspect of the collection at a time will be featured in four successive presentations. Opening on the 26 August 2025, the presentation focusses on people, interpersonal relationships, and encounters.

Anton Graff, Portrait of Provost Johann Joachim Spalding, ca. 1800, pastel (Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, Christoph Müller Stiftung).

Portraits and plant studies, harbours and history paintings, landscapes and genre scenes: this exhibition shows the entire spectrum of an extraordinary collection. A fascinating cross-section of European art history unfolds within works from early modern history to the present. The exhibited works on paper originate from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and France—telling of people and nature, history and everyday life, beliefs, feelings, and the power to create. Representations of figures and nudes are on view, as well as seascapes, nature studies, animals, forests, and quite a lot more.

A selection of Müller’s generous gift will be presented to the public from 20 May 2025 to 14 June 2026 in four changing displays in the ‘Kabinett in der Galerie’ space at the Gemäldegalerie (Old Masters Paintings). The first presentation, A World of Words and Images (on view from 20 May to 24 August 2025), referenced Müller’s endeavours as a publisher and critic, as well as his passion for art and collecting.

The second presentation, Encounters, focuses on depictions of people and interpersonal relationships. Some of the featured artworks show moments of togetherness, such as social events, mutual exchange, or shared glances. The images depict romantic liaisons, domestic scenes, and social interactions, and reflect the personality of a tireless collector who nurtured numerous friendships and loved parties. These are juxtaposed with portraits, figurative representations, and detailed studies that centre the individual. Whether pictured in silent contemplation or facing the viewer, these subjects are a testament to the reality that human existence is constantly oscillating between proximity and seclusion, between moments of shared experience and periods of solitude..

Future Presentations

On Travelling and Being at Home
2 December 2025 — 8 March 2026

Leaf by Leaf: A Life with Art
10 March — 14 June 2026

Christoph Müller (1938–2024) was a German publisher, theatre and art critic, art collector, and patron, who made many generous gifts to public museums during his lifetime. As the editor-in-chief and co-publisher of the Schwäbisches Tagblatt, he shaped the German media landscape from 1969 to 2004. Müller’s passion for art is reflected in an impressive collection of works from various epochs and regions. He collected across the board, led by individual and personal preferences, as well as sound connoisseurship. His penchant was for 16th- and 17th-century Dutch art. In 2007, he gave the Kupferstichkabinett a significant collection of 370 Dutch and Flemish drawings and prints from the 16th to 18th centuries. With the current gift all collection areas of the Kupferstichkabinett’s holdings are being appreciably enhanced and enriched. Christoph Müller died in Berlin in 2024, at the age of 86. The exhibition should be understood as recognition of his impact in supporting the arts, as a sign of gratitude and an invitation to share his joy in art—a thought that continually motivated him.

Opening soon at the Musée des Beaux-Arts Orléans:

The Marcille Chardin Family: A Passion from Orléans

Les Chardin des Marcille: Une passion orléanaise

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, 9 September 2025 — 11 January 2026

Rarely has a painting aroused so much passion as Le Panier de fraises des bois (1761) by Jean Siméon Chardin, the quintessential work of French painting, put up for sale in 2022 and acquired for a record price by the Musée du Louvre after having remained in the prestigious collection of the Orléans-born Eudoxe Marcille (1814–1890) since the mid-19th century.

His name alone evokes that of Chardin. His father, François Marcille (1790–1856), from a family of seed brokers in the Beauce region, had taken a visionary interest, as early as 1822, in all those artists from the time of Louis XV that nobody looked at anymore, to the point of assembling the largest collection of his time, with 4,500 works including dozens of Bouchers, Fragonards, Greuze, Prud’hon and Géricault… and, above all others, thirty Chardin. This consuming passion was passed on with his collection to his two sons, Eudoxe and Camille. Camille, who became curator of the Chartres museum, and Eudoxe, director of the Musée d’Orléans from 1870 to 1890, continued to promote Chardin’s work, even buying back after their father’s death, beyond the works he had designated for each, what could continue to be assembled from this ideal nucleus. Quite naturally, the Goncourt brothers, great biographers of 18th-century artists, drew on this reference collection, in which Chardin’s entire career is represented, to write the first biography of the painter of silent still lifes and pantries in 1863.

Chardin was at home in Orléans and, in a way, always had been. His friendship with Aignan Thomas Desfriches (1715–1800), the entrepreneur who had made Orléans an artistic capital in the 18th century, could be seen in the checkered scarf Chardin wears in his self-portrait, which came from Desfriches’ home. Desfriches himself owned numerous paintings by Chardin. He was followed by Casimir de Cypierre (1783–1844), son of the Intendant d’Orléans under Louis XVI, whose name a quay bears, who owned at least three. François Marcille and his son Eudoxe continued to nurture this Orléans passion. Around the exceptional loan of Panier de fraises des bois, five other Chardin paintings from the legendary Marcille collection are brought together for the first time since the 1979 retrospective. They are accompanied by the Self-portrait with bezicles (spectacles), an eventful acquisition which, in 1991, brought this artist, so dear to the heart of Orléans, into the pastel cabinet, but whose memory alone inhabited the collections. Chardin, more than ever, is at home in the Musée d’Orléans, which this family of discreet enthusiasts has helped to elevate, through François’ research and Eudoxe’s twenty years at the service of its collections, into a place of rediscovery and sharing.

With the exceptional participation of the Musée du Louvre. The exhibition benefits from exceptional loans from the Musée du Louvre, the Musée Jacquemart-André, the Musée de Picardie, private collectors, and the Marcille family descendants.