Aleksey Bogolyubov was born in the Novgorod province in 1824. In 1841, he graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps with the rank of midshipman and began serving in the Navy. When the young officer was 23 years old, the president of the Academy of Arts, the Duke von Leuchtenberg, became interested in his drawings — he was traveling on the Kamchatka steamboat at that time. At his request, Emperor Nicholas I allowed Bogolyubov to enter the Academy of Arts and remain in the Navy. After training, the artist became a painter at the Main Naval Headquarters.

Later, Bogolyubov left the naval service, traveled to Europe for seven years, lived for a long time in Paris, where he became close friends with the masters of the Barbizon school that called the French artists who singled out the landscape in a separate genre of painting — in the beginning of the 19th century, he often served only as a background.

Masters of the Barbizon school worked a lot on nature and created realistic views, wrote people who are engaged in everyday work. This can be seen in Bogolyubov’s sketch: in the foreground, the artist depicted boats and two characters, most likely a fisherman and his son. Almost clear sky, calm water surface, slightly touched by the sun, make the work easy and airy.

Italian architecture adds monumentality to the landscape: the painter painted the Venetian Doges’ Palace, St. Mark’s Cathedral, St. Mark’s Columns and St. Theodore.

Alexey Bogolyubov was the grandson of the writer Aleksandr Radishchev. Based on his collection, he created the first public museum named after his grandfather in Saratov, and later founded a drawing school in the same city. A.N. Radishchev Saratov State Museum of Fine Arts still exists and remains one of the largest in Russia.