Born into a family of sculptors, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince left Metz, the town of his birth, to enter François Boucher’s studio in Paris. He continued his training in Italy, but it was his travels in Russia between 1757 and 1762 that had the most profound impact on his career.

During the five years he spent in Russia, Le Prince traveled through many regions, from Lapland to Siberia. He made numerous sketches which became an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the rest of his career. Shortly after his return to France, he was accepted into the Académie Royale as a landscape painter; his works, with their characteristic Russian exoticism, met with great success among a French clientele.

In An Imagina...