Shchedrin, Semen

Born Apr. 6 (17), 1745, in St. Petersburg; died there Sept. 1 (13), 1804. Russian landscape painter. The brother of F. F. Shchedrin.

Shchedrin studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1759 to 1767. He received a stipend to study in Paris with F. Casanova from 1767 to 1769 and in Italy from 1769 to 1772. He stayed in Italy until 1776, at which time he returned to St. Petersburg to teach at the Academy of Arts. Shchedrin became an academician in 1779 and adjunct-rector in 1798. In 1799 he became head of the academy’s landscape engraving class.

Shchedrin’s paintings are in the spirit of sentimentalism. His park scenes—primarily of Peterhof, Gatchina, and Pavlovsk— combine principles of decorative and landscape painting. Yet despite conventional composition and color, they convey the beauty of nature and depict specific locales (for example, The View of Gatchina Palace From Dlinnyi Island, 1796; the panel Stone Bridge at Gatchina Near Konetabl’ Square, 1799–1800—both at the Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow).

Shchedrin helped establish the landscape as an independent genre in Russian painting and gave it a national character.