This is a repeat version of View of the Peter and Paul Fortress and Palace Embankment (1793, Archangelskoe Mus.). Nikolai Lvov’s Neva Gates and the Commander’s Landing Wharf are depicted in the foreground.
On the opposite bank of the River Neva are part of the Old Admiralty, Winter Palace, Old Hermitage and the Hermitage Theatre (from right to left). The bridge across the Winter Canal can be seen between the Old Hermitage and the theatre.

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).