Karl Karlovich Piratsky

Appointed court painter by Emperor Nicholas I in 1836, Karl Karlovich Piratsky mainly worked in watercolour and the predominant theme in his oeuvre is the Russian military. He had a distinguished career and was made professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1869.

The present work depicts the officers and cadets of the 3^rd Alexandrovsky Military School, later the 3^rd Alexandrovsky Military Law School, in the Moscow Kremlin. Piratsky included the notable General Boris Antonovich Shvanebakh (1823-1905) in the centre of the composition. Shvanebakh was the School's director and a prominent military leader, participating in both the Russian campaign to help the Austrian Empire suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and the Crimean War of 1853-1856.

The present work comes from the collection of Georgy Evgenievich Klimov (1895-1967), a White Army officer who settled in Quebec City, Canada after the Second World War, where he owned an antique shop.

We are grateful to Sergey Podstanitsky for providing additional cataloguing information.