Alexander von Kotzebue was the son of the playwright
August von Kotzebue. He was born in
Königsberg. On August's death in 1819, Alexander was educated in the Cadet Corps in
St Petersburg, leaving it in 1834 as a Gardeleutnant. However, four years later, in 1838, he moved to an artistic career and began his artistic training at the St Petersburg Academy under
Alexander Sauerweid. He spent six years at the St Petersburg Academy and at the end of them, in 1844, exhibited his first painting,
The Storming of Warsaw, in St Petersburg. He then went to continue his studies in Paris in 1846 and to Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany in 1848, before finally settling in Munich. There he became imperial professor of Russian and an honorary member of the
Academy of Fine Arts Munich. He painted several large-scale works for the Russian tsar of Russian battles in the
Seven Years' War and the campaigns of
Alexander Suvorov. The most important of these are considered to be the
Storming of Schlüsselburg,
Battle of Poltawa,
Storming of Narva, ''Crossing of the Devil's Bridge
and Founding of St Petersburg'' (
Maximilianeum, Munich). Kotzebue died in Munich and is buried there in the
Alter Südfriedhof. ==Gallery==