Drawing Detail
View of the Winter Palace from the AdmiraltyArtist: Vasily Semyonovich Sadovnikov
Medium: Drawings, Watercolour, 24.7x37.4 cm
Date: 1840s
Genre: Cityscape, Landscape
Source: Gift of Queen Elizabeth II to the Chairman of the USSR Supreme Council K.E. Voroshilov, 1956
The Winter Palace was built in 1754-1762 by the architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli. Almost 200 meters long, 160 meters wide and 22 meter high, this was the biggest and the most elegant building in Saint Petersburg.
Vasily Semyonovich Sadovnikov (Russian: Василий Семёнович Садовников) (28 December 1800 - 10 March 1879) was a Russian painter, and a leading Russian master of perspective painting.
Vasily Semenovich Sadovnikov was born in 1800 in Saint Petersburg into the family of a serf belonging to Princess N. P. Golitsina (nicknamed "Princesse Moustache"). He obtained his freedom in 1838, after her death, when he was already a well-known artist.
His views of St. Petersburg and its suburbs from 1830 to 1850 and interiors of its palaces, commissioned by the royal court and other high patrons, are best known. Sadovnikov's Panoranic View of the Nevsky Avenue (1830–1850), which was 16 meters long, was later etched and widely published. He died in 1879 in Saint Petersburg.