Lot Essay
Alexander Orlowski was a Polish painter and a pioneer lithographer in the Russian Empire (T. Szrajber, ‘Orlowski and the Beginnings of Russian Lithography’, Print Quarterly, IX, no. 4, 1992, pp. 371-379). From 1802 he worked in Saint Petersburg and was appointed a court painter under Czar Alexander I (1777-1825).
Two similar drawings in the same technique and depicting rural subjects, both dated 1802, are in the collection of the Stroganov Palace Museum in Saint Petersburg (inv. no R-1660 and R-1661; Alexander Orlowski 1777-1832, exhib. cat., Saint Petersburg, National Museum, 2002, nos. 15 and 16, ill.).
Two similar drawings in the same technique and depicting rural subjects, both dated 1802, are in the collection of the Stroganov Palace Museum in Saint Petersburg (inv. no R-1660 and R-1661; Alexander Orlowski 1777-1832, exhib. cat., Saint Petersburg, National Museum, 2002, nos. 15 and 16, ill.).