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 Ivan Alvazovsky (1817-1900)  

            Russia's Best Marine Painter?  Of course!  World's Best?  Probably!

The Ninth Wave (1850)

Aivazovsky's success was well-earned, for no other artist managed to capture with such brilliance, conviction and apparent ease that most difficult of subjects for the painter -  the changing moods of the sea.
Aivazovsky was not just a professional marine painter. He knew the sea and loved it sincerely. Although he turned occasionally to other art forms such as landscape and portraiture, these were only brief departures from his chosen genre to which he remained faithful all his life.
When Aivazovsky began his career, Russian art was still dominated by Romanticism and it was the romantic mood which set the terms for Russian landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is scarcely surprising then to discover romantic elements both in Aivazovsky's early works, and in the majority of his later ones. One reflection of this is his choice of subjects again and again we find him depicting shipwrecks, raging sea battles and storms

Aivazovsky continued in the tradition of the great Russian landscape painters of the early nineteenth century without recourse to imitation. He created a new tradition, a new school of painting, thus making his mark on the marine painting of his own and subsequent generations.
Apart from his work as an artist, Aivazovsky was a tireless and versatile public figure: he took an eager interest in world events and sympathized deeply with small nations struggling for their independence. At the same time he worked selflessly for the good of his native town Theodosia and did much to assist young artists.

	Title: Ivan Aivazovsky, Great Collection   Volume One Format: Hardcover, slip cover, 416 pages, 410 color images Publisher: White City Language: Russian and English  Published 2002 Product Dimensions: 14.5" x 10.5 x 1.5" Price: $275 plus $15 for shipping, handling and insurance	Quantity:
Click here for printable order form.
	Title: Ivan Aivazovsky, Great Collection   Volume Two Format: Hardcover, slip cover, 331 pages, 281 color images Publisher: White City Language: Russian and English  Published 2008 Product Dimensions: 14.5" x 10.5 x 1.5" Price: $275 plus $15 for shipping, handling and insurance	Quantity:

Aivazovsky was born on 17 July 1817 (29 July New Style) in the ancient Crimean town of Theodosia, where his father, an Armenian by nationality, had settled at the very beginning of the century. His father was a relatively well-educated man who knew several oriental languages, and who, though a trader of small means, played a significant part in the commercial life of the town. Unfortunately the plague epidemic which hit Theodosia in 1812 wrecked his business, and when the future artist was born, the family had indeed fallen on hard times. There is some evidence to suggest that poverty obliged the young Aivazovsky to work in the cosmopolitan coffee-shops of Theodosia, alive with the chatter of many different tongues: Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian and Tartar. The young boy's eager mind soaked up all the colorful sights and sounds which Theodosia with its mixed population had to offer. He also had a keen musical ear and soon learned to play folk melodies on the violin. Later Aivazovsky recalled some of these melodies for his composer friend Mikhail Glinka, who used them in his compositions. It was drawing, however, which most seized the young boy's imagination: lacking other materials he drew in charcoal on the whitewashed walls of Theodosia. These drawings attracted the attention of A. Kaznacheyev, the town-governor, who helped Aivazovsky to enter the high school at Simferopol and in 1833, the St Petersburg Academy of Arts.
    Aivazovsky's student days in St Petersburg coincided with a confused and in many ways contradictory phase in Russian history. On the one hand it was a period of harsh tyrannical rule and political stagnation under Tsar Nicholas I, on the other it witnessed a great flowering of Russian culture, beginning after the Napoleonic War of 1812. This was the age of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Belinsky, Glinka and Briullov. Within the Academy the canons of Classicism, closely linked to ideas of civic duty and patriotism, still held sway, but the new stirrings of Romanticism were also discernible

	Title: Ivan Aivazovsky, Great Collection   Volume One Format: Hardcover, slip cover, 416 pages, 410 color images Publisher: White City Language: Russian and English  Published 2002 Product Dimensions: 14.5" x 10.5 x 1.5" Price: $275 plus $15 for shipping, handling and insurance	Quantity:
	Title: Ivan Aivazovsky, Great Collection   Volume Two Format: Hardcover, slip cover, 331 pages, 281 color images Publisher: White City Language: Russian and English  Published 2008 Product Dimensions: 14.5" x 10.5 x 1.5" Price: $275 plus $15 for shipping, handling and insurance	Quantity:
Click here for printable order form.