Fedor
Yakovlevich Alekseev

The son of the guardian of the Academy of Sciences. He studied at the Academy of fine arts, 1766. In 1773 he was sent by the Academy of fine arts in Venice to specialize in decorative painting.Upon returning to St. Petersburg, works as a painter at drama school. In parallel, it is much copied in the newly opened Hermitage Museum, mainly paintings landscape painters. Alekseev began to paint views of St. Petersburg, in 1794, received the title of academician, and, hence, the recognition of him as a landscape painter. F. Y. Alexeyev was the beginning of the picture in Russian art of the city in painting. He traveled a lot and in the district of the XIX century wrote the types of provincial cities of Russia and Moscow.

F. Y. Alexeyev - the first Russian master paintings of the urban landscape. In 1766 - 73 years. studied at the Academy of arts, first in class "painting flowers and fruit", then in the landscape. In 1773 for .software landscape received a gold medal and was sent for three years in Venice studying painting theatrical scenery, although it did not match his inclinations. In Venice, Alekseev exploring its famous landscape painters A. Canal, F. Guardi enjoys species and fantastic engravings of Piranesi, who lived in Rome. This young artist incur the displeasure of the academic authorities. Upon returning home Alekseeva met guardedly, he not only offered no programs to academic degree, but was forced to work as a decorator in the theater school (1779-86). Leave unloved service the artist has managed through the reproduction of landscapes A. Canale, B. Bellotto, G. Robert and J. Bern from the Hermitage. Copies Alexeyev, creatively reproducing itself picturesque original system had incredible success. They brought the artist fame "the Russian Canaletto" and welcome the opportunity to go to the writing of the original landscape.

Among his works of the 1790s is particularly known for "Peter and Paul fortress and the Palace embankment" (1793) and "View of Palace embankment from the Peter and Paul fortress" (1794). Alekseev creates a sublime cast in perfect form (in accordance with the laws of classicism) and at the same time the living image of the big, sublime, individual in its beauty of the city in which the person feels as a resident of the Golden age. The ideal and the real are here in complete balance.

For these pictures Alekseev gets in 1794 the title of academician of perspective painting. The following year, the artist sent to new Russia and the Crimea to write the kinds of places that in 1787 Catherine the great visited. So there are landscapes of the southern cities - Nikolaev, Kherson, Bakhchisarai.

In 1800, Emperor Paul I give an assignment to write Alekseev views of Moscow. The artist became interested in the old Russian architecture. He stayed in Moscow more than a year and brought back a number of paintings and watercolors with many kinds of Moscow streets, monasteries, suburbs, but mainly a variety of images of the Kremlin. These types of OTIC;! are reliability, even documents. Moscow has attracted many customers to Alexeyev, among whom were the nobles and princes of the Imperial family.

In the 1800s, Alekseev is already head of the class of perspective painting at the Academy of arts (1802) he returned to his beloved subject of St. Petersburg. But now the passion for holistic harmony of space paintings from the artist changed a great interest in the world of people and their lives against the background of the same beautiful palaces and wide Neva river. His work has appeared as if the noise of the city. People with their daily activities now occupy the entire foreground of the canvases. Shapes became clearer, bulkier, heavier, much warmer color, painting has become especially density. These are the "View of the English embankment from Vasilyevsky island", "view of the Admiralty and Palace embankment of the First cadet corps", "View of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg", "the spit of Vasilievsky island from the Peter and Paul fortress".

Gradually, the audience forgets the aging artist. Died this great, IPO-scribe, and many years of hard work to prove his right to be a landscape painter, in utter poverty, leaving a large family. The Academy was forced to give money to his funeral allowance to the widow and small children.