This is a repeat version of a painting for which Fyodor Alexeyev was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts – View of Palace Embankment from the Peter and Paul Fortress (1794, Tret. Gal.). On the left is the Peter and Paul Fortress with the Naryshkin Bastion. The Naryshkin Bastion was renamed the Catherine Bastion after the wife of Peter the Great (1725). The Summer Garden can be seen on the opposite bank of the River Neva. Palace Embankment begins on the right with the Marble Palace and the Betskoi and Saltykov houses.

Alexeyev Fyodor

Alexeyev, Fyodor Yakovlevich
1753/1754 (?). St Petersburg - 1824, St Petersburg
Painter, founding father of the Russian school of urbanscape painting. Son of a guard at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Studied fruit and flower and landscape painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1766-73). Awarded a fellowship to Venice (1773-77). Studied under Giuseppe Moretti and Pietro Gaspari. Returned to St Petersburg and worked as a painter for the Imperial Theatres (1799). Copied paintings by Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto for Catherine the Great. Nominated to the Academy (1794). Sketched places visited by Catherine the Great (1787) in south Russia (1795). Painted urbanscapes in Moscow (1800). Councillor of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1802), Taught perspective painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1803-24).