Russian painter, born in Revel (today Tallinn, Estonia). In 1830-32 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. He specialised in watercolour, and in 1854 he became academician of watercolour painting.
The artist executed watercolours of the interiors of the most famous buildings in Moscow (the Grand Kremlin Palace), St. Petersburg (the Winter Palace and the Hermitage) and Gatchina (the Great Palace).
In the second row on the right, by the door, is Titian’s Venus with a Mirror, which was sold in 1931 to Andrew Mellon, the financier and U.S. Treasury Secretary, and later became part of the collection of the National Gallery of Art that he founded in Washington. In the 191th century, the painting was such an undisputed masterpiece that a copy could be placed in the same room, on the other side of the door.
A place of honour among the works of 16th- to 18th-century German painting in this hall was allotted to Mengs’s monumental canvas The Judgment of Paris (at the top of the right-hand wall), bought from the artist’s studio after his death at Catherine II’s request.
The hall of Russian painting in the Hermitage is next to the gallery of French painting. The majority of the paintings in the Russian hall were Neoclassical biblical compositions and landscapes with ancient buildings painted in Italy and Palestine.
