Benjamin Patersson

1748 – 1815

Swedish painter and etcher. The son of a customs' scribe, he was a member of the Society of Painters in Gothenburg, where he studied in the studio of the painter S. Frick. In the late 1770s he travelled throughout Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, and then on to Riga in 1784 where he lived and worked. Three years later he settled in St. Petersburg, where he lived until the end of his life. Some twenty of his works were transported from the Hermitage to the Peterhof Palace near St. Petersburg in 1799 and he was appointed official painter of the Imperial Court in 1800. Patersson worked in portraiture and genre painting but devoted his oeuvre primarily to depictions of St. Petersburg. He was renowned for his paintings and engravings of the city. He executed approximately one hundred views of St. Petersburg, of which thirty-three were paintings and the remainder watercolours and engravings. In 1798, Patersson became a member of the Stockholm Academy of Arts, where he exhibited his works many times. He died in St. Petersburg in 1815.

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