View of the English embankment from Vasilievsky Island

The artist is the Mayer

A native of the German city of Nuremberg Johann Georg Mayr was invited to St. Petersburg in 1778 to the post of drawing master at the Academy of Sciences. Between 1796 and 1803, he performed a picturesque series of species of St. Petersburg dedicated to the centenary of the city. Nine works of this series are stored in the State Russian Museum, including this picture.

In the foreground is a sandbank near the embankment of Vasilievsky Island, on the second – the English embankment created in 1767–1788. Left – house a. P. Bestuzheva-Ryumin, where the Senate was located since 1763, behind him-Isaacievsky Cathedral (later rebuilt).