Fyodor Alexeyev depicts the corner house on the embankment of Vasilyevsky Island and the English Embankment on the other side of the River Neva. This was possibly the view from the artist’s studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Painted at the pinnacle of Alexeyev’s professional career, this small canvas conveys the very atmosphere of the town and port of St Petersburg.

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).