The artist is Raev
Vasily Raev depicted a real event, a famous thunderstorm, which erupted in St. Petersburg on the night before the opening of the column, August 30, 1834. “By night, the whole sky was lined with thunderous clouds,” Vasily Zhukovsky described this event, “the thunderstorm finally flashed; Lightning for lightning, healed in thousands of places, as if stood above the city, sparkled the bulk of the column, which suddenly came out of the darkness, threw a minute shadow to the square illuminated in a circle and disappeared along with it … ".
The Russian Museum. From the icon to the present. 2005. With. 132.
