C. M. Fredro

Relatively little is known about C. M. Fredro, a member of a prominent Polish noble family forced into exile during the political upheavals of the nineteenth century. A friend of Charles de Talleyrand, Fredro would have been about sixteen years old in 1836 when A Room in the Reuss Palace, Dresden was completed. Another drawing in the Thaw Collection, A Room in a Florentine Palace, came from an album which may have been assembled by Fredro’s sister and originally contained a number of his drawings. He seemed to have a talent for caricature; comical drawings record a visit that he made in 1848 with Talleyrand to Rochecotte, the French château belonging to the Marquise de Castellane. (JGK)