Carlo Bossoli

Night View of St. Petersburg, the Smolny Convent from the Banks of the Neva, recto; various studies, verso

Gouache heightened with pastel

Signed C. Bossoli at lower left, inscribed and dated Londra 1859 on the verso

266 x 457 mm (10 1/2 x 17 15/16 in.)

Provenance

Private Collection.

Bibliographie

Ada Peyrot, Carlo Bossoli, Luoghi, personaggi, costumi, avvenimenti nell’Europa dell’ottocento, visti dal pittore ticinese, Turin, Topografica Torinese editrice, 1974, p. 403, n° 781, illustré p. 405.

Although born in Switzerland, Carlo Bossoli grew up in Odessa, Ukraine, where his family had emigrated in the 1820s. He started to work very early as an assistant in a shop that sold books and prints, where he learnt drawing by copying the works of old masters. Countess Elizabeth Vorontsova, the wife of the governor of “New Russia” and Bessarabia, quickly noticed Bossoli and made him enter the workshop of Rinaldo Nannini, an Italian artist who was responsible for the decoration of the Opera House in Odessa. The apprenticeship with this pupil of Sanquirico was defining for Bossoli’s work: he acquired his remarkable sense of composition and tendency to visual surprise.

In 1839-40, the Vorontsov decided to send him to study in Italy, in Rome and Naples. He befriended the community of English artists living in Rome and with them refined his technique of watercolour and tempera. After returning to Ukraine, he settled in Alupka and travelled across the region producing a large number of landscape drawings, street scenes, studies of costumes and villages. In 1844, however, he definitively moved to Italy, opened a workshop first in Milan and then in Turin and travelled tirelessly throughout Europe.

What distinguished the artist from the beginning of his career were landscapes and large perspective or panoramic views. Noticing the interest the public felt in foreign countries and new politics and also understanding the new opportunities that lithography offered, he began to produce views to be published in commercialised albums. Among his first projects, Vedute della città di Torino (1851) and Galleria sulla linea ferroviara Torino-Genova (1853) were particularly appreciated. But the success that defined his career was probably the result of the publication of 52 views in the album The Beautiful Scenery and Chief Places of Interest Throughout the Crimea from Paintings by Carlo Bossoli. The artist created them in 1854, during the Crimean War, from memory anda large quantity of studies made in the 1840s, and they were so much admired that Queen Victoria and the Duke Wellington were among the collectors. Employed by Prince Oddone, he followed the Piedmontese army in 1859-1861 and executed 150 gouaches on the subject of the war, which gained him the appointment of “pittore reale di storia” to the royal family in 1862. Ten of these gouaches are now in the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento in Turin.

Ada Peyrot, the author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works, described this night view with a boat crossing the Neva in front of the Smolny Convent as “enchanting”. In 1857, Bossoli made a journey to Russia and Scandinavian countries, from which he must have brought back numerous studies and sketches which he later used to compose various views. The present gouache was probably made after this journey and the inscription Londra 1859 on the verso seem to confirm this. Bossoli actually produced several views of Russia during the years following this journey. His ledger records in 1858 a Panoramic View of St. Petersburg sold to Marquis Alfieri in Turin for 820 Swiss francs, as well as a large-scale painting representing the Smolny convent in St. Petersburg sold for the London market along with another painting for the sum of 5,000 francs to Brassey^[1]. Here, the romantic nocturnal atmosphere, natural to the subject but also rendered through the treatment of light, is particularly successful: the glow of the moon diffused in the clouds, sparkling stars, reflections in the water and in the golden dome, one street lamp lit up on the bank – all contribute to the mysterious atmosphere enfolding this nightscene in St. Petersburg.

^[1] The artist’s ledger published by Ada Peyrot, op. cit. (Bibliography), p. 32. The artist’s ledger published by Ada Peyrot, op. cit. (Bibliography), p. 32.