Sebastopol: Panoramic view from the northern forts towards Fort St Nicholas, Fort Alexander and Inkermann Bay.
Carlo Bossoli was a renowned designer, painter and tireless traveller whose works are represented in the finest museums and private collections. In 1820 Bossoli’s father, a stonemason, moved his family to the Odessa region. Bossoli was a gifted artist from an early age, working as a set designer apprenticed to Rinaldo Nannini and selling his first cityscapes at eighteen. He worked in Odessa, Rome and Milan and became particularly known for his ‘cosmorami’, an optical chamber in which his great panorama of Odessa was viewed. Bossoli soon came to the attention of Prince Michael Vorontsov, Viceroy of the Caucasus, who commissioned numerous paintings and provided quarters for several years on his estate at Alupta.
In 1844 Bossoli moved to Milan from which he travelled extensively around Europe before establishing himself in Turin. Near the end of the Crimean War he went to London to complete a few commissions and gained great acclaim with his Crimean Exhibition on Pall Mall and the publication by Day and Son of his Scenery of the Crimea. Largely based on his drawing and watercolours executed on the estate of Prince Vorontsov, this series of fine original colour lithographs show a Crimean Peninsula that is tranquil, developed and prosperous, perfectly demonstrating the well composed, precis and suggestive work for which Bossoli was famed.