Nikolai Makovsky. View of the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin

This 1867 watercolour by Nikolai Makovsky is devoted to the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin. The red brick tower with its clock and many-tiered top rises above the crenellated wall, and its spire is crowned by a golden double-headed eagle, which was later replaced by a star. On either side of the gateway stand two small chapels, demolished in the 1920s. Church domes can be seen behind the wall, and on the spacious square in front of the tower there are only a few passers-by.

Nikolai Makovsky (1841–1886) was a landscape and genre painter from a well-known artistic family: the younger brother of Alexandra and Konstantin Makovsky and the elder brother of Vladimir Makovsky. He studied at the Moscow Palace School of Architecture and then in the architecture department of the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1870 Makovsky became one of the founders of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions.

The sheet is executed on paper in watercolour and gouache with white, ink and pen.