Mikhail Lebedev

Mikhail Lebedev painted sunlit Italian landscapes: shady avenues, old trees and hill towns in the countryside around Rome, with strong contrasts of warm light and cool shadow. His career was very short, but he is counted among the most gifted Russian landscape painters of his generation.

He was born in Dorpat (now Tartu in Estonia) and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg under Maxim Vorobiev, winning the Academy’s big gold medal in 1833 for a view of Lake Ladoga. In 1834 he went to Italy on an Academy pension and joined the Russian artists working in Rome. He painted around Albano, Ariccia and Castel Gandolfo, and his Italian pictures were an immediate success. He died in Naples in 1837, aged only 25.

In Ariccia Near Rome and An Alley in Albano, look at the dappled light under the trees.