In 1800, Sylvester Shchedrin entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied landscape paintings.

[1] In 1811 he graduated with several awards including the Large Gold Medal for his painting View from Petrovsky Island that gave him a scholarship to study abroad.

In 1825 he finished his work Lake of Albano that was a new step in his movement to natural composition.

He lived in Rome and Naples, working en plein air, drawing bays and cliffs and views of small towns and fishermen villages.

[4] At the end of the 1820s, Shchedrin began to draw uneasy, almost nightmarish nocturnal landscapes, which may have been inspired by his gradually declining health.