Ivan Aivazovsky

Marine painting is central to Ivan Aïvazovski’s reputation: sources attribute more than 6,000 works to him, about half of them seascapes. When painting, he worked from memory, guided by his sensations and by a pencil sketch rather than by preparatory studies. The source places his work within 19th-century Romanticism and notes that a realist tendency later appears in his paintings without removing their Romantic dimension. The works mentioned include Moonlight (1849), The Ninth Wave (1850), Storm (1854) and The Black Sea (1881), as well as The Rainbow (1873), Shipwreck (1876), The Wave (1889) and The Maria Caught in the Storm (1892).

After an initial period of study at the Simferopol Gymnasium, he entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1833; he graduated from it in 1837 with a diploma and a gold medal. The Academy then tasked him with painting seascapes in Crimea for two years; during that stay, he sailed on ships of the Russian Imperial Navy. On his return to Russia, he was appointed a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy in 1844, then a painter on the staff of the Russian Imperial Navy in 1845. He later took part in several Russian fleet expeditions and travelled to Turkey, Greece, Egypt and America, among other places. Alexei Bogolyubov worked with him on the staff of the Russian Navy from 1853. After commissioning more than forty canvases from him, Sultan Abdülaziz invited him to Constantinople in 1874 and decorated him there with the Order of Osmaniye.

In Theodosia, he established an art school in 1865 and also set up an Armenian school and a printing press; he additionally contributed to local projects, including the construction of a chapel, the water supply network and a railway line. His works were exhibited in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tiflis, Paris and New York, among other places, as well as in Vienna in 1873, Florence in 1873 and 1874, and Nice in 1874, 1886 and 1897. In 1841, Pope Gregory XVI acquired The Chaos for the Vatican Museum. His house in Theodosia became a museum in 1889, where many of the artist’s works are kept. In Paris, the Musée national de la Marine presents the exhibition Aïvazovsky (1817-1900), the Poetry of the Sea from 7 February 2007 to 20 January 2008.

Works recorded at auction

Artcurial Beurret Bailly Widmer · Lot 65

Strand mit Fischer vor Capri, 1892

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

Strand mit Fischer vor Capri, 1892
huile sur toile

Catalogue period : 2015-06-20

Published result : 38880 CHF

Fees not specified in the available data

Estimate : CHF 30000–40000

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