PATERSSON, Benjamin - b. ~1748 Varberg, d. ~1815 St. Petersburg - WGA

PATERSSON, Benjamin

(b. ~1748 Varberg, d. ~1815 St. Petersburg)

Swedish painter and etcher. The son of a customs’ scribe, he was a member of the Society of Painters in Gothenburg, where he studied in the studio of the painter S. Frick. In the late 1770s he travelled throughout Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, and then on to Riga in 1784 where he lived and worked. Three years later he settled in St. Petersburg, where he lived until the end of his life.

Some twenty of his works were transported from the Hermitage to the Peterhof Palace near St. Petersburg in 1799 and he was appointed official painter of the Imperial Court in 1800. Patersson worked in portraiture and genre painting but devoted his oeuvre primarily to depictions of St. Petersburg. He was renowned for his paintings and engravings of the city. He executed approximately one hundred views of St. Petersburg, of which thirty-three were paintings and the remainder watercolours and engravings.

In 1798, Patersson became a member of the Stockholm Academy of Arts, where he exhibited his works many times. He died in St. Petersburg in 1815.

Catherine the Great Visiting the Ice Mountain, St. Petersburg

Catherine the Great (1729-1796) is being led from the direction of the Winter Palace, by a procession of mounted guardsmen, towards the temporary ‘ice mountain’, on the frozen River Neva. Sliding down its frozen slopes was one of Catherine’s great pleasures. The entire crowd looks on at their Empress in awe, their hats off and some bow their heads. Decorative blue and white andreyevsky (the cross of St. Andrew) flags are flying on top of the ice mountain. The crowd is about to witness Catherine the Great joining them in her favourite winter pastime of riding down the ice slide. The Imperial Academy of Arts, only recently christened by Catherine, can be glimpsed in the background.

The painting is signed, inscribed and dated lower right: ‘Benj:Patersson pinxit 1788’.

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Tauride Palace Seen from the Neva

The Swedish painter Benjamin Patersson was renowned for his paintings and engravings of St. Petersburg, where he lived from 1787 until his death. He executed approximately one hundred views of the city, of which thirty-three were paintings and the remainder watercolours and engravings.

Between 1783-89 Catherine II had one of the great monuments of Neoclassicism built for her favourite, Gregory Potemkin. After his success in annexing Crimea (Tauride), this Field Marshall was rewarded with the honorary title of Prince of Tauride and given a palace. The Tauride Palace, built by the architect Ivan Starov, served as the model for countless houses of the nobility built in and around St. Petersburg.

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