Arguably the foremost topographical artist in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, Carlo Bossoli was born near Lugano in Switzerland and grew up in Odessa in the southern Ukraine. As a young artist of considerable ability, he came to the attention of the Countess Vorontsov, wife of the governor of the province, and by the age of eighteen was selling his drawings of urban and landscape views.

He travelled extensively around the Crimea, particularly in the early 1840’s, and produced a large number of drawings, watercolours and gouaches of everyday life and views of the main sites and cities there. Bossoli and his family returned to Europe in 1843, eventually settling in Milan. In 1850 he made his first visit to England and S...