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Born: 1817
Died: 1900
Summary of Ivan Aivazovsky
As many as half of Ivan Aivazovsky’s more than 6,000 paintings deal with the sea, and of these the most enduringly powerful are his stormy seascapes, which made him a sensation in the late Russian Empire. Aivazovsky’s technical prowess and prolific output remained bound to his successful formula, even as the Russian revolution gained momentum in the late nineteenth century. Paintings depicting storm-tossed ships dwarfed by nature’s grandeur show his love of Romanticism, while paintings depicting naval victories show his loyalty to the Russia of the past. He was quickly overtaken in importance by a younger generation of Russian artists, but the market for his work remains strong to this day and his best seascapes continue to convey a sense of raw energy.
When Aivazovsky left Russia in the 1930s, he was one of Russia’s last great academicians, the product of the European art academy network, a Westernizer from his travels around Europe, a favourite of the Imperial family, but increasingly out of step with reformers calling for more socially responsive and authentically Russian art.
Aivazovsky is best understood as the artistic boy from a poor background in a Black Sea port who found that well-connected patrons could transport him to the glittering world of St. Petersburg, from where he returned home a success and a celebrity. Armenian boy’s awe of elemental forces is evident when the Black Sea bursts through the polite surfaces of his paintings, as it does occasionally.
At his best, Aivazovsky injected the energy of late Romanticism into scenes that were otherwise coldly accomplished in their self-conscious grandeur and striving for pathos. He was an extraordinarily fast and prolific painter, often on a grand scale. This energy can be seen in some of his later seascapes, which are less formal but still exhibit a more modern interest in the materiality of painting thanks to their physical expressiveness.
When both Aivazovsky and the elderly English painter J. M. W. Turner were in Rome, they met. They shared a mutual admiration for each other’s work, and both depicted the sea in a dynamic way. Turner’s late paintings were still derided as “blots” by a fellow member of the Royal Academy in London, whereas Aivazovsky’s early work was being praised for its classical virtues at the same time. If Aivazovsky had learned more from Turner, whose “blots” stand as triumphantly experimental precursors of modern vision, we might be happier today. However, Aivazovsky’s body of work shows how traditional virtues in paintings can constrain that vision if applied too conservatively.
Biography of Ivan Aivazovsky
Childhood
As a child, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky grew up in a Black Sea port that had been the site of cosmopolitan trade for centuries. Two hundred ships were reported in the harbour by an Arab traveller of the 14th century. Since his birth, Konstantin was a wealthy Armenian merchant, but he lost much of his money when the town was hit by a plague five years before Ivan was born. When he was a boy, Aivazovsky’s family named him Hovhannes, which is the Armenian form of the name Ivan. He was raised in the family’s small, white-washed house on a hill above the port, where he had a great view of the water.
Port life, with its many languages and constant flow of ships reminding one of the world’s horizons, was a fertile environment for growing up. The storey goes that when Ivan was a kid, he started drawing on the whitewashed walls with samovar charcoal. His father’s friend, an architect, became aware of his talent either through these drawings or some other means. A cultured and well-connected man in town, the town governor, was impressed by the boy’s perspective drawings and offered to help open doors for the young Armenian artist.
Early Life
While visiting Simferopol, Ivan befriended the son of the town mayor. Ivan received watercolours and paper from the mayor, who had recently been promoted to provincial responsibilities and had to relocate his family to Simferopol with them. They all went together, including Ivan. With the help of a woman with connections to the Russian nobility, Ivan was able to secure a six-year scholarship to the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg while attending school there.
To Aivazovsky, Ivan’s week-long journey to St. Petersburg, which took him across the Ukrainian steppes to Moscow and then on to Moscow, must have seemed like a major breakthrough. Even though he found the Academy’s training rigidly formal and its social protocols unfamiliar, he would take advantage of the opportunity. As evidenced by his frequent visits to the Academy’s sickbay due to severe chest pains, it appears that Aivazovsky was not content in St. Petersburg, but he worked hard and handled the pressure better when placed in Maxim Nikiforovich Vorobiov’s landscape class. Unlike Aivazovsky, who learned to play the violin at the age of ten, Vorobiov’s interest in “atmosphere” in painting attracted his student.
While visiting St. Petersburg in 1835, Emperor Nicholas I requested that the Academy provide a helper for French seascape painter Philippe Tanneur. By taking time off sick to finish his own painting, the young man enraged the French master, who won a silver medal in the Academy’s exhibition that year. To Tanneur’s dismay, Aivazovsky was seen by some as having committed an embarrassing social faux pas. Aivazovsky was sent to sea with the Baltic Fleet by the Emperor after he requested a meeting with him and was impressed by the experience. He bought the painting for the Winter Palace.
The rapid rise of Aivazovsky was aided by the patronage that his talent attracted at the time. Despite this, he was beginning to incorporate Vorobiov’s emphasis on atmosphere and Tanneur’s seascape technique into his own unique style. “the artist’s talent will take him far.” a reviewer wrote in 1836 after seeing seven of his paintings at the Academy’s exhibition and awarding him a gold medal. Aivazovsky was introduced to Pushkin when the latter visited the exhibition, and the poet would later appear as a contemplative figure on the shores of the sea in several of his paintings.
When Aivazovsky returned from a second assignment as an observer with a naval unit engaged in Black Sea coast skirmishes, he was sent to Europe by the Academy as part of his gold medal award and the Academy’s practise of sending its most promising students to European capitals. Berlin, Vienna and Rome were the cities where Aivazovsy lived for two years; he also spent time in Italy’s Venice (Venice), Florence (Florence), and Naples (Naples). Aivazovsky met J.M.W. Turner in Rome in 1842, and Turner was impressed by the artist’s attention to detail in his paintings. Aivazovsky was also influenced by the works of English painter William Martin and French painter Théodore Géricault in addition to Turner.
While peripatetic Aivazovsky travelled, painted, and absorbed other artists’ work in the early 1840s, the artistic and intellectual milieu was still heavily influenced by late Romanticism. However, a schism was about to break out between Slavophiles and Westernizers, between those who sought distinctively Russian aesthetic solutions and those who wanted to be part of larger European currents in art. During his time in Italy, Aivazovsky met and travelled with writer Nikolai Gogol, a fellow Slavophile with a similar upbringing to that of the painter’s own province. Both Gogol and Aivazovsky were coming to terms with the impact of Romanticism on the European imagination, but Gogol would undermine Romantic pretensions in his writing, whereas Aivazovsky’s Romanticism would become more full-blooded and expansive. ‘ As much as Aivazovsky benefited from his time in Italy and Paris as a student (he referred to Italy as a “second Academy”), it was the airiness of Dutch seascapes, the tumultuous mood of Turner’s paintings, and the late Romantic movement’s humbling of humanity before nature’s might that most influenced him as an artist. The Westernizing side of Russian culture’s intellectual schism saw him, not least in his pursuit of an individually distinctive style rather than the expression of a particularly Russian sensibility, on the Westernizing side of things. This makes Aivazovsky a worthy heir to Europe’s “academy” tradition, with which the Russian Academy had aligned itself in its early years.
Mid Life
The Imperial Academy of Arts made Aivazovsky an honorary member in his late twenties when he returned to Russia. In 1841, Alexey Tyranov painted a portrait of him and it was already more popular than the work of his contemporaries. He was given the opportunity to paint more seascapes, coastal scenes, and naval battles after being named the head painter for the Russian Navy. A major exhibition of his work was held in 1846 at his studio and house in his hometown of Theodosia, after having travelled to Constantinople, which he viewed romantically as the spiritual capital of his world in 1845. As an instructor at the Academy in 1847, he married an English governess named Julia Graves, with whom he had four daughters.
Despite the fact that it was not a happy marriage, the settled life would not be free from interruptions. It was during the outbreak of the Crimean War that Aivazovsky’s ability to paint gripping scenes of naval warfare was once again put to good use. Before he returned to Paris at the end of World War II, the artist painted twenty-five paintings in the French capital, which were well received and sold. As a result of the Emperor of France’s appreciation of his work and social standing, he bestowed upon him the Legion of Honor, the highest honour bestowed upon a foreign painter. Russian and European cultural elites regarded Aivazovsky as a pillar of their respective institutions.
Aivazovsky, on the other hand, became something of an artistic dinosaur in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s. With Alexander II’s “Tsar liberator” succession, the emancipation of serfs, and other social reforms, there were calls for “bringing arts to the people” and for artists to attend to the social realities of their own country. An old-school artistic grandee, Aivazovsky refused to change; his subjects were the grandiose ones on which he had built his fame: the stirringly romantic seas, visions of Constantinople’s magnificence, the vastness of the steppes, and naval feats symbolising human valour against nature.
Aivazovsky’s estate outside Theodosia, where the Empress and her children had recently returned from Constantinople, was the location of their planned visit in 1867. The imperial yacht and its flower-decked gondolas were waiting for him in the harbour. A triumphal arch had been built, the town was festooned with flags under Aivazovsky’s watch, a special ballet had been staged, and a lavish meal had been held at Aivazovsky’s estate in front of a huge painted backdrop depicting a romanticised version of Constantinople. To this day, Aivazovsky’s painting appears to have been frozen in time, as if it had been created on the day he entertained and presented the Empress of Russia with a painting depicting their lavish celebrations in the town of his upbringing.
By 1900, Aivazovsky’s last exhibition in St. Petersburg had been cancelled, and those last three decades saw the magnanimous consolidation of Aivazovsky’s technique. For him, it was all about repeating the actions that had made him a master. Aivazovsky staged a version of his own painterly vision when he transformed the fishermen of Theodosia into Venetian gondoliers for the Empress’ delight. The ordinary vanished behind the art of the self-consciously sublime.
Aivazovsky founded an art school in Theodosia, which he helped to develop greatly, travelled extensively, and opened Russia’s first provincial art gallery, which drew huge crowds. He was given additional recognition. At 65, he found love again and remarried to a woman he loved. For the 1892 Chicago World Exhibition, he travelled to the United States, where he exhibited twenty paintings. With the celebrations of his eightieth birthday in full swing, the hotels of Theodosia were once again full of visiting dignitaries. Later, he gave his final class at the Academy a lively two-hour demonstration of seascape technique, which ended in rapturous applaud.
Late Life
Russian art’s “last Romantic” Aivazovsky, was a figurehead rather than a direct impact on succeeding painters. In the cultural schism in Russia in the late nineteenth century, his travels to Europe put him on the side of the Westernizers, but his response to Slavophile calls for a more authentic art was to retreat into a conservative and dreamy vision of Constantinople as an imagined spiritual capital for a hybrid European and Eastern identity, of Crimean gypsy encampments as an idealisation of community, of fishermen dwarfed by the thaw of the Black Sea. As a studio painter, Aivazovsky never painted from life; instead, he created his pictures from a variety of gathered information and his own memories, working from sketches he made in his sketchbook. As a rule, he didn’t really see what he painted, but he collected enough information in his sketchbooks to create a painting based on what he had imagined. As a result, Aivazovsky’s legacy is minimal, his Romanticism is superficial, his working method and intentions are self-indulgent according to today’s critical taste, his rapid turnover of canvases panders to the demand for more of the same from the exhibitors and buyers, and his conservatism is out of reach for radical forces that would reshape and re-energize Russian culture.
However, in another way, Aivazovsky’s legacy lives on. To achieve a more impressionistic effect, his seascapes were painted thickly, layering on broad strokes from a central point of detail, such as a ship, so that the peripheral view appears less detailed than the foreground. Aivazovsky’s interaction with the canvas might be considerably more immediate, embodied, and visceral than that of other 19th-century academics who worked meticulously and deliberately. For the power he desired in the paint, the painter would thrust his body at the surface with a brush in his hand. People who have been to his studio have remarked on how physically taxing it was to see him work at such a quick pace. Many of Aivazovsky’s stormy seascapes still churn with this intensity and physicality, in contrast to his more serene settings. To this day, the visceral quality of his oceans as painted surfaces makes me feel alive and a living example of what raw materiality in painting can create.
Famous Art by Ivan Aivazovsky
Chaos (The Creation)
1841
Aivazovsky painted Chaos (The Creation) in his early twenties while he was living in Rome following his studies at the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg, and Pope Gregory XVI purchased it and had it hung in the Vatican, despite the controversy surrounding its literalistic depiction of a divine presence. In this regard, Aivazovsky’s friend and fellow Russian-Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol wrote: “Your Chaos caused a chaos in the Vatican.”
The Ninth Wave
1850
There are many people who believe that Aivazovsky’s most famous work is The Ninth Wave, a massive oil painting measuring nearly 11 feet (3.3 metres) by 7 feet (2.2 metres) that depicts people grasping at strewn-abouts from a sunken ship in a stormy sea. According to traditional nautical belief, the ninth wave in a series of waves is the most deadly, largest, and most destructive wave in the series. Aivazovsky was 33 when he painted this work, and it reflects his mature Romanticism in technique, subject matter, and overall appeal to the general public.
The Rainbow
1873
Dostoyevsky’s works were described as “seething whirlpools … waterspouts which hiss and spout and suck us in” by the English novelist Virginia Woolf. “that startles a spectator in a real-life storm.” was something that Dostoyevsky found in this painting. Upon completion of this project, Dostoevskii declared Aivazovsky to be a “master who has no competition.” A contemporary of Woolf’s, Rosa Newmarch, visited Russia extensively and fell in love with Aivazovsky’s “truthful vision” in paintings like The Rainbow, which she referred to as “Aivazovsky’s true vision.”
The Black Sea
1881
Aivazovsky’s The Black Sea can be compared to the French tradition of seascape painting that he was linked to through Philippe Tanneur and included works by Géricault such as The Storm (or The Shipwreck). Early influences on Aivazovsky’s style include Tanneur’s Steamer Off Dover and the latter’s The Black Sea, both of which feature rolling waves with spume-fringed crests. It’s always more like Géricault’s water, which is sculpted and frozen in time, in Tanneur’s work. Aivazovsky was able to capture a greater sense of motion as his own technique outstripped his early teacher’s, as if the French painters’ attention to surface detail got in the way of communicating fluidity and depth.
Descent of Noah from Ararat
1889
The younger generation of Russian artists, led by Ilya Yefimovich Repin, were increasingly critical of Aivazovsky’s work, which was already well established by the time he was awarded the title of academician in 1876, when Aivazovsky’s success was well established. On the other hand, among some Russian artists, Repin symbolised an increasing sense of social responsibility. Compare Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-73) with Descent of Noah from Ararat and you will see that Repin’s work was characterised by a conservatism that Aivazovsky and others actively opposed. There is nothing sentimental or sentimental about the barge haulers who work for Repin in Russia’s rugged landscape. The people depicted in Aivazovsky’s painting aren’t just biblical figures; they’re also a representation of the artist’s romanticised Armenian heritage and a nascent Orientalism, which aimed for a lost Constantinople and beyond as a source of authentic identity. In contrast to Repin’s generation, Aivazovsky produced hundreds of paintings like this one, which sought to escape from the uncertain realities of Russia’s changing society into a world of mythical certainty, using Biblical symbolism as a convenient vehicle.
The Wave
1889
The Waves, which came out in 1898, is the last in a series that began with The Black Sea in 1881 and concluded with The Waves. Even though Aivazovsky’s old theme of shipwrecked mariners is revived in this version, the version’s abandonment of hope sets it apart from all previous versions.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- As many as half of Ivan Aivazovsky’s more than 6,000 paintings deal with the sea, and of these the most enduringly powerful are his stormy seascapes, which made him a sensation in the late Russian Empire.
- Aivazovsky’s technical prowess and prolific output remained bound to his successful formula, even as the Russian revolution gained momentum in the late nineteenth century.
- Paintings depicting storm-tossed ships dwarfed by nature’s grandeur show his love of Romanticism, while paintings depicting naval victories show his loyalty to the Russia of the past.
- He was quickly overtaken in importance by a younger generation of Russian artists, but the market for his work remains strong to this day and his best seascapes continue to convey a sense of raw energy.
- When Aivazovsky left Russia in the 1930s, he was one of Russia’s last great academicians, the product of the European art academy network, a Westernizer from his travels around Europe, a favourite of the Imperial family, but increasingly out of step with reformers calling for more socially responsive and authentically Russian art.
- Aivazovsky is best understood as the artistic boy from a poor background in a Black Sea port who found that well-connected patrons could transport him to the glittering world of St. Petersburg, from where he returned home a success and a celebrity.
- Armenian boy’s awe of elemental forces is evident when the Black Sea bursts through the polite surfaces of his paintings, as it does occasionally.
- At his best, Aivazovsky injected the energy of late Romanticism into scenes that were otherwise coldly accomplished in their self-conscious grandeur and striving for pathos.
- He was an extraordinarily fast and prolific painter, often on a grand scale.
- This energy can be seen in some of his later seascapes, which are less formal but still exhibit a more modern interest in the materiality of painting thanks to their physical expressiveness.
- When both Aivazovsky and the elderly English painter J. M. W. Turner were in Rome, they met.
- They shared a mutual admiration for each other’s work, and both depicted the sea in a dynamic way.
- Turner’s late paintings were still derided as “blots” by a fellow member of the Royal Academy in London, whereas Aivazovsky’s early work was being praised for its classical virtues at the same time.
- If Aivazovsky had learned more from Turner, whose “blots” stand as triumphantly experimental precursors of modern vision, we might be happier today.
- However, Aivazovsky’s body of work shows how traditional virtues in paintings can constrain that vision if applied too conservatively.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
