Fyodor Alekseyev. View of the Kremlin and the Stone Bridge

This painting by Fyodor Alekseyev (1753–1824) shows the Moscow Kremlin as seen from the Stone Bridge. It is painted in oil on canvas and dated 1815.

Alekseyev is described as the first master of the urban landscape in Russian painting, and his contemporaries called him the “Russian Canaletto”. A graduate of the Academy of Arts, he worked in Venice as a theatre painter in 1773–1777 and later won success with copies of paintings by Canaletto and Bellotto in the Hermitage collection. In 1800, on the orders of Paul I, the artist went to Moscow to paint views of the old capital.

Alekseyev returned more than once to the view of the Kremlin from the Stone Bridge: a painting of the same motif, made between 1800 and 1810, is in the Russian Museum. This canvas is dated 1815 and set in a baguette frame.