Lot 1283 Dα

Verso on the stretcher the inventory number in red ink: “616” and a label of the Russian Museum of Alexander III. in St. Petersburg with the date 1905.

Aivazovsky painted amongst others portraits, genre scenes, history paintings and landscapes of the Ukrainian steppe. But it was his maritime paintings capturing the sea and the light in a unique way that secured him a place as one of the leading painters of the 19th century.
Aivazovsky, son of an Armenian shopkeeper, received his training at St. Petersburg Academy between 1833 and 1837. In 1840, he travelled to Italy where William Turner took notice of him dedicating an Italian poem to the artist (“L´arte tua ben´e potente/Perché il geniol´inspiro!”). Aivazovsky was an ardent traveler all his life and he visited Europe, the Near East and America. In 1845, he settled in his native town of Feodosija where he established a studio, opened a gallery in 1880 and where he finally died 20 years later. Aivazovsky´s early works are painted in a traditional romantic way, but they already show his interest for dramatic light effects. Aivazovsky´s art was especially important for the development of a realistic maritime painting that captures the movement of changing light, air and water. In this field Aivazovsky can be considered as one of the leading artists not only of Russian, but also of European landscape painting.
This painting dated 1883 was created in the mature period of the artist and exemplifies his unique sense of colour. A Russian three-masted schooner is fighting against high towering waves in a stormy sea. The sea in the lower part of the painting is rendered almost transparent by the skillful use of light, while the sky shows dramatic cloud formations partly diffused by light and becoming darker and threatening towards the horizon.
Ivan Samarine, having seen the painting in original, describes it as a “genuine work by Aivazovsky, and a fine and typical example of his late period.”