MINNEAPOLIS.- The Associated Press has reported that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has purchased the Louis XV-era painting 'Comtesse d'Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume' by Alexander Roslin for a little more than $3 million. "The painting, bought from the New York gallery Wildenstein & Co. with museum funds, is the MIA's most expensive purchase since the museum spent about $5 million in 1998 to acquire Claude Lorrain's 1638 painting "Pastoral Landscape," reported NBC affiliate station KARE.

Swedish painter and pastellist, active in Russia, Germany and France. He trained with Lars Ehrenbill (1697–1747), a draughtsman employed by the Admiralty in Malmц, and in Stockholm under Georg Engelhardt Schrцder (1684–1750), a portrait painter working in the tradition of Hyacinthe Rigaud and Nicolas de Largillierre. In 1741 Roslin moved to Gцteborg, but the following year he returned to Malmц, where he executed devotional works for the parish church of Hasslцv, Halland, and began establishing himself as a portrait painter.

Alexander Roslin was born the same year that Charles XII died, in 1718. This was a period of material reconstruction in Sweden. People were simply unable to afford the vanity and luxury which the fine arts were considered part of, and so young artists - Alexander Roslin among them - went abroad to search for a living. He was born in Skåne, in the south of Sweden, and learned to paint in Stockholm. In the mid-1740s he was court painter at Bayreuth. He went on an educational tour of Italy and in 1752 came to Paris. He then spent the rest of his life in France, except for two years in the service of Catherine II in St Petersburg, and it was in that connection that he passed through Sweden again.

Studio had replaced workshop as the term for the artist´s workplace by the 17th century, following the introduction of the Academies of painting and the artists´ rise in status. It also encompasses the members of the studio. Paintings classified as Studio of indicate that they were painted by assistants working in the studio. In the 19th century the studio could also constitute a school of painting, where paying pupils were taught the rudiments of painting. Couture´s studio in Paris, for example, was attended by those artists who were opposed to the methods of Ingres´s studio, which came to enjoy the approval of the Academy.