About this lot

Description

A Napoleonic battle scene pencil on paper, framed, 33 x 44cm; together with a folio of pencil drawings and watercolours relating to the battle, on twelve sheets, double-sided, some inscribed and annotated in pencil in English and a few in Russian (13)

Footnote: Provenance: Sotheby's, Sussex, 20 May 1991, lot 324 Alexander Ivanovich Sauerweid was born in the Dutchy of Courland in the Baltic region - the present-day Latvia. When Courtland was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1795, his family fled to Germany. He trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts between 1806 and 1812. One of his early commissions was a series of horse portraits for Napoleon. Following his travels to Paris and London, he finally settled in St Petersburg in 1814, where he was invited by Czar Alexander I to paint portraits of Russian soldiers and their uniforms. He specialised in battle painting and taught at the Imperial Academy, of which he was made an honorary member in 1827. His paintings were praised for their sense of documentary accuracy and were displayed in Imperial Palaces.

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