Background
Pavel Svinyin was born on June 8, 1787 in Russian Empire to Petr Nikitich Svinyin and Ekaterina Yurievna Lermontova. He was Appolon Maykov's brother-in-law.
Diplomat linguist painter writer
Pavel Svinyin was born on June 8, 1787 in Russian Empire to Petr Nikitich Svinyin and Ekaterina Yurievna Lermontova. He was Appolon Maykov's brother-in-law.
He studied at boarding school at the University of Moscow.
Svinyin, an inveterate Anglophile, accompanied Dmitry Senyavin in the second Archipelago expedition of 1806 and was employed at the Russian consulate in Philadelphia between 1811 and 1813. He was an aide-de-camp to General Moreau and was present when he died.
His first book, Sketches of Moscow and St. Petersburg (1813), made its first appearance in Pennsylvania in English. He left one of the first written depictions of black church music in the United States and launched the publication of the literary magazine Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1818.
Svinyin was on friendly terms with many leading Russian writers, including Pushkin and Gogol, and promoted the careers of talented peasants. In 1830 he left the capital and settled at his country estate near Galich.
Svinin authored several historical novels and plays, a guide to St. Petersburg and its suburbs and a catalogue of the Kremlin Armoury (1826). His personal collection, known as the "Russian Museum", featured a number of valuable paintings, statues, manuscripts, antiques, coins, and gems. It was auctioned off in 1834.
As secretary to the Russian diplomatic representative in the early 1810s, he painted a number of watercolors of life in America. Later he published the book Voyage Pittoresque Aux Etats-Unis de l'Amérique par Paul Svignine en 1811, 1812, et 1813.
"Merrymaking at a Wayside Inn", depicts travelers grabbing a hurried and impromptu dance on the road in early 1810s America (in rural Pennsylvania), and shows practices which would have been considered inelegant or shockingly informal in many socially genteel circles in Europe at the time (such as smoking in the presence of ladies, smoking indoors, a man taking off his tailcoat in the presence of ladies - leaving him wearing only his waistcoat and shirt on top - and holding onto one's horsewhip while dancing). Only one of the women has bothered to take off her bonnet. One of the dancing men isn't wearing socks/stockings.
At left, a couple is indulging in what could be considered an inappropriate public display of affection by some European standards of etiquette, while at right a black fiddler provides the music for the dance. Wagons can be seen outside the door.
Shad Fishermen on the Shore of the Hudson River
A Cliff
Niagara Falls Table Rock by Moonlight
Baptists
Boston Mall
Moravian Sisters
River Fort
Meeting of two ships in the sea
Indian's entertainment
Merry Making at the Wayside Inn
Full Sail off Sandy Hook Entrance to New York Harbor
Ruined house
Niagara Falls Canadian Side by Moonlight
The Pennsylvania Hospital
The tomb of George Washington
Albany
Replenishing the Ship's Larder with Codfish off the Newfoundland Coast
American Landscape
A Bridge
A Philadelphia Anabaptist Immersion during a Storm
Fourth of July in Centre Square
American Indians in the boat
View of Betlehem
An Osage Warrior
Cod fishing
Travel by Stagecoach Near Trenton
A Fort
Steamboat
In the Forrest
Centre Square and the Marble Water Works
Fishmen
Town on the riverside
Works on the shore
The road in the mountains
Perkins' Villa
Great Warrior of Seminols
The Chief of the Little Osages
Black Methodists Holding a Prayer Meeting
Steamboat Travel on the Hudson River
Philadelphia from across the Delaware River
New York City and Harbor from Weehawken
St. Paul's Cathedral in New York
Roller
Steamboat Travel on the Hudson River
Niagara Falls
The Monument to Alexander Hamilton at Weehawken
View of New York
Pensilvanian Landscape
The New City Hall
The Upper Bridge over the Schuylkill
View of Washington
At the plantation
An Indian with a Scalp
In literary society, Svinin was treated mostly ironically because of his tendency to exaggerate with a hint of sensation, and also because of his willingness to obey the authorities.
He married to Nadezhda Apollonovna Maikova. They had a daughter Catherine.