Alexander Kotzebue

Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm Franz von Kotzebue (Russian Александр Евстафьевич Коцебу - Alexander Ewstafijewitsch Kotzebu; born June 9, 1815 in Königsberg, † August 24, 1889 in Munich) was a German - Russian battles and history painter of the Romantic period.

Life

Alexander von Kotzebue was the son of the playwright August von Kotzebue. At the age of four he was in 1819 witnessed the murder of his father by Karl Ludwig Sand. After that, he was educated in the Petersburg Cadet Corps, which he left in 1834 as a guard lieutenant. But he turned to after four years of art and began as a student of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts under Sauerweid his studies. After spending six years there, he went to his training in 1846 in Paris and 1848, until he finally settled down on trips to Belgium, Holland, Italy and Germany in Munich.

Kotzebue was the Imperial Russian professor and honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His grave is in the Old South Cemetery.

Works

His first painting, The storming of Warsaw, was created in 1844 in Saint Petersburg. Since then he has created numerous large-scale representations of Russian battles in the Seven Years War and in the campaigns of Suvorov for the Tsar of Russia. As the most important among them are: Assault on Schlüsselburg, Battle of Poltava, storming Narva, crossing over the Devil's Bridge, The founding of St. Petersburg ( Maximilianeum in Munich).