Ivan Aivazovskiy

A new investigation reveals fascinating details about the time Kuindzhi’s students spent in Crimea at their teacher’s generous invitation. “Beauty begets a painter like the earth begets grass" these words from the “Essays about Crimea" by the renowned expert on regional history and culture Yevgeny Markov fully apply to Arkhip Kuindzhi. The artist’s entire life was intimately associated with the peninsula: he was born into a family of Greek migrants from Crimea; in his youth he visited Aivazovsky’s studio in Feodosia; his landscape A Tatar Saklia [Hut] in Crimea” earned him the rank of artist; and he attempted to found a colony of artists there... The desire to share its beauty also inspired Kuindzhi to organize and finance a summer arts study trip for his students in Crimea.

Although the main source of Aivazovsky’s income was the property that he owned, little is known today about exactly what belonged to the artist, or even where his land holdings were located. Art historian Irina Pogrebetskaya, for many years the chief curator at the Aivazovsky Picture Gallery in Feodosia, considers the evidence that remains.

“My address - Feodosia, always.” That was how Ivan Aivazovsky would refer to his permanent home, the centre of both his life and work. Wherever the artist travelled, to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Paris, Venice, Constantinople or New York, he always returned to his native town. To this day the artist’s house attracts guests - art-lovers, specialists, connoisseurs and those are simply drawn to Aivazovsky’s work. Within its walls, music is still played and artists still work, and the house continues to capture the hearts and souls of new admirers of the talents of its famous resident.

A great marine painter who left a vast artistic legacy behind him, Ivan Aivazovsky was himself often portrayed by his contemporaries, while as a talented portraitist himself, the artist also created around 10 self-portraits over the course of his long artistic career. He was painted by a whole host of his fellow artists including friends from the Academy of Arts such as Vasily Sternberg and Mikhail Scotti; older contemporaries such as Academician Alexei Tyranov and the “patriarch” of the Moscow School of Painting, Vasily Tropinin; the chief ideologue of the “Peredvizhnik” (Wanderers) movement, Ivan Kramskoi; and the “apologist” for salon painting, Konstantin Makovsky. Two marble busts of Aivazovsky survive, one by Alexander Belyaev, depicting the artist as a young man, the other by Leopold Bernhard Bernstamm, created in the painter’s old age. After Aivazovsky’s death, a bronze statue was erected in Feodosia, designed by the sculptor Ilya Ginzburg. Despite all this, Aivazovsky’s depiction in art has never been the subject of significant study. How did the great artist perceive himself, and how did he wish to be seen by future generations? How, indeed, was he viewed by his contemporaries?

Ivan Aivazovsky, that most renowned artist, outstanding representative of the Russian academic school and internationally recognized seascape artist, has long been a symbol of prosperity, stability and investment wisdom for Russian society. Alongside artworks by Isaak Levitan, Vasily Polenov, Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Makovsky, the homes of certain “most prominent” representatives of the “Russian World” are often decorated with Aivazovsky’s paintings - as if they are an equivalent of the gold reserve or a signifier of strong faith in the stability of the government; a symbol of power, and an articulation of the conservative notion of the “imperishable”; an attribute of luxury, and a reminder of an enviable dowry or rich inheritance.