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Painter, teacher. Born in St Petersburg to Johann von Rabus, a German tutor at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1800). Studied under Mikhail Ivanov and Maxim Vorobyov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1810–21). Graduated with a second gold medal (1821) and travelled across the Ukraine and Crimea (1821–27). Academician (1827). Visited Turkey and Greece (1827) and lived in Germany (1827–34), where he was influenced by the Romantic poet Johann Ludwig Tieck and the scientist Baron Carl Ludwig von Reichenbach. Lived in Moscow (1834–57), where he taught perspective painting at the Kremlin Palace School and the Constantine Institute of Boundary Engineers (from 1835). Professor of landscape painting at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1844–57). Painted romantic views of Moscow and the surrounding districts (Kuskovo, Kuntsevo, Tsaritsyno, Fili and Ostankino), paving the way for the Moscow school of landscape painting. Died in Moscow and buried at the German Cemetery in Lefortovo (1857).