Painting up a Storm

From his studio in Theodosia, the painter Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky completed 6000 works — mainly of ships and the sea. On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of this prolific master’s birth, Russian Life asked Semyon Ekshtut to tell the artist’s story.

You could say that Aivazovsky’s life embodied the “American dream” — from rags to riches. From waiting tables in a coffee house in the Black Sea port of Theodosia, Onik Gaivazovsky (he would later remove the first letter of his last name and change his first to Ivan) went on to become a famous sea painter, whose work adorns some of the most important museums in the world.

Aivazovsky was born a hundred years before the October Revolution, during the reign of Alexander I. He died during the reign of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, a few months before the beginning of the 20th century. His long life was filled with recognition and a multitude of awards (his dress uniform boasted the Russian Orders of Alexander Nevsky, Vladimir and the White Eagle, along with the French Legion of Honor).

Aivazovsky didn’t know the meaning of idleness. All his life he worked prolifically and fruitfully, painting, according to eyewitnesses, as many as 6000 works. The celebrated “Proconsul of the Caucasus,” General Aleksei Petrovich Yermolov, was stunned when, in 1851, Aivazovsky presented him with an oil painting he had completed in the span of three hours. Incapable of working on a single picture for months on end, the artist worked intensely, completing a painting in several days at most. He continued work until his dying day. His unfinished painting, “The Explosion of a Ship,” still stands on his easel in the Theodosia Museum.

A true benefactor of his native town, Aivazovsky convinced the authorities to have a trading port built in Theodosia and to connect it with the railway system. He himself donated the money to build a water main and art gallery in the city, and he bequeathed the majority of his famous paintings to Theodosia.

Aivazovsky’s family settled in Theodosia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. His mother was a beautiful young Armenian, and Aivazovsky always remembered his roots, keeping up a connection with the Armenian diaspora in Turkey and America. His father was involved in trade from a young age. In his “Autobiography,” the artist recalls his father: “He knew Turkish, Armenian, Hungarian, German, Hebrew, and the Gypsy language perfectly, along with most of the dialect of the Dunai Kingdom [modern-day Romania and Moldova].” Then, settling in Crimea [from Galicia], he lost a large part of his fortune as a result of the plague that ravaged Theodosia in 1812. At the time of the birth of his younger son, Konstantin Gaivazovsky was far from rich, supporting his family by working part-time as a legal advisor and through small-time trade. He did, however, have his own little house in Theodosia. It was during this time of difficulty that young Onik apparently helped the family budget by waiting tables in local restaurants.

It was on the walls and fence of this house that the young Onik, who also played the violin very well, drew his first pictures. They were done with homemade charcoal on wood whitened with lime, as he did not own either pencils, paints or paper. The story goes that Alexander Kaznacheyev, the city boss of Theodosia, stumbled upon these charcoal drawings and that this chance occurrence changed the boy’s fate. Kaznacheyev, who also happened to be a close acquaintance of Alexander Pushkin, gave the budding artist a box of watercolors and some good paper. Furthermore, after he had become the Tavrichesky Governor, he lodged the 13-year-old Onik in his Simferopol home and sent him to the local gymnasium (secondary school). At Kaznacheyev’s house, Aivazovsky met Natalia Fyodorovna Naryshkina, née Rostopchina, and charmed this distinguished lady with his drawings. Her patronage helped the young boy to enter the Academy of Artists in St. Petersburg. On August 23, 1833, Aivazovsky arrived in that famous city. Once again, fate smiled on him. His class was the last one whose tuition was paid by the State purse.

At the beginning of 1834, the state-sponsored akademist was commandeered as a helper to the French sea-painter Phillipe Tanner, who had recently arrived in the capital. Yet this fashionable landscape painter was in no hurry to pass on his professional secrets  — the artistic ‘recipes’ for portraying ocean waves, foam, clouds and land — to his young helper. Tanner, who could not cope with the multitude of orders from Nicholas I and his court, needed Aivazovsky to carry out various drawings from life. But the latter had no desire to become anyone’s slave or unrecognized apprentice. Without Tanner’s knowledge, Aivazovsky entered his painting “A Study of Air above the Sea” in an Academy exhibit,  and received a silver medal. When he found out, the stingy Frenchman, angered at losing his ‘free’ helper, complained to the court. Following a command from the highest circles, the painting was removed from the exhibit and its painter faced the wrath of the emperor. The fate of the artist, which had begun so well, was hanging by a thread.

Once again, however, good fortune prevailed. The intervention of fable writer Ivan Krylov, poet Vasily Zhukovsky and Professor Alexander Zaurveid of the Academy of Artists helped to unmask Tanner’s slanderous and tightfisted ways. Aivazovsky was saved, and Nicholas I acquired the painting in question for the Winter Palace. Afterward, the tsar inquired good-naturedly of Professor Zaurveid why no one had wanted to tell him the truth for so long. “During a storm, Your Majesty,” the professor replied with great tact and dignity, “a tiny boat doesn’t risk proximity to a large and formidable ship, but it will peacefully sail alongside it in clear and quiet weather.” Aivazovsky learned a lesson from this experience and, from that time on, avoided both the court and the circles of the Academy, supposing, quite fairly, that they were inseparable from jealousy, backbiting and intrigue.

In the autumn of 1836, Aivazovsky received a gold medal and was presented at the next Academy exhibit to Alexander Pushkin and his wife, Natalia Nikolaevna. The poet quizzed the artist extensively about Crimea and then said: “Work, work, young man, that’s the main thing.” (Aivazovsky remembered this meeting until his dying day, painting more than 20 canvases based on Pushkin’s themes.) Along with the gold medal, the painter won a trip to Italy. But before visiting Rome, Florence and Venice, the painter decided to spend two years in his native Crimea, working independently. In the spring of 1839, he took part in military landing operations on the banks of the Caucasus, where he met General Nikolai Raevsky the younger, Admiral Mikhail Lazarev and the young officers Pavel Nakhimov and Vladimir Kornilov, who later became the pride of the Russian fleet [see Russian Calendar, page 29]. The painting “Landing at Subasha (Raevsky’s Landing)” created a huge stir in the capital. The delighted tsar acquired it for the princely sum of 2000 silver rubles — which in those days was equivalent to a general’s yearly salary.

From then on, Aivazovsky’s name became synonymous with naval battles and sailors’ exploits, themes he painted for the rest of his life. In the autumn of 1839, he graduated from the Academy and, in the following year, was sent abroad for “finishing in art.” Until 1844, the artist traveled extensively. His foreign passport contained 135 visas for different European destinations, and he stayed in 40 of them for some time. In his 1962 biography of the painter, N. S. Barsamov wrote: “Aivazovsky’s foreign passport grew to a significant size. A 47-page notebook ... of notes, various stamps and other marks had to be sewn to his half-meter passport page.”

With time, Aivazovsky’s reputation spread outside his native Russia. Pope Gregory XVI purchased his painting “Chaos” and hung it alongside some of the world’s most glorious works. In 1844, the artist returned to Russia and was inducted into the Main Naval Staff, from which he gained the right to wear an admiral’s uniform, yet he received  no monetary compensation. He had to make a living with his own hands. At the age of 27, he became an Academician of the St. Petersburg, Rome, Paris and Amsterdam academies. But Aivazovsky did not succumb to the temptation of becoming a fashionable landscape painter in the capital. Instead he moved back to his home town of Theodosia and spent the rest of his long life drawing and painting the sea. This life, while quiet, gave him everything he needed: happiness, creativity, worldwide recognition, the respect of his colleagues, and, in the end, even riches. “No matter how much you feed a wolf, he looks to the forest,” remarked Nicholas I, when he could not tempt the artist back to his court.

New powers ascended to the throne, Europe was rocked by revolutions, new artistic movements were born and died, but Aivazovsky’s fame remained unshakable. However, the artist never locked himself in an ivory tower. In 1879, Aivazovsky undertook an expedition to Genoa to collect material connected with Columbus’ discovery of America; in 1884, he traveled to the Volga, and in 1892, took a trip to America. In 1874, the Turkish Sultan Abdul-Aziz awarded the artist the highest Turkish prize — the Order of Osmaniye, but in 1895, when he found out about the Ottomans’ slaughter of Armenians, Aivazovsky threw this and his other Turkish awards into the sea, announcing to the Turkish consul that the Turks could do the same with his paintings which they owned: “I won’t regret it in the least!”

Aivazovsky’s long life was inextricably linked with the rhythms of the sea. The painter was blessed with a phenomenal memory. He remembered the color of the waves of his native Black Sea, not only in different hours, but in different minutes; he could imagine the sea as if it were in front of him — peaceful and stormy, in spring and in fall, winter and summer. For Aivazovsky, the Black Sea was his own special talisman, with which he was constantly comparing the color of other seas and oceans. His paintings were amazingly life-like. Tour guides in the Theodosia art gallery always led visitors to Aivazovsky’s huge canvas “Among the Waves” with a certain amount of trepidation. On viewing it, many who had sailed on the sea near Theodosia and experienced a storm felt queasy.

During one of his many sea voyages, Aivazovsky encountered a storm in the Bay of Biscay and was almost killed (newspapers even printed his obituary). For the rest of his life he was to remember how violent and terrible the sea could be. When it came to portraying a storm, he had no equal. He did not like to work from life, for, in his own words: “The movements of the living elements cannot be captured by the hand: to draw lightening, gusts of wind, the shine of the waves from life is unthinkable. For this, the artist must remember them. The painter who only copies nature becomes her slave, tied by the arms and legs to his work ... .”

The smooth walls of Aivazovsky’s studio, painted a dark red, were completely bare of decoration. Against this background, the artist was best able to conceive and transfer to canvas the color of the waves, the play of sunlight, the clouds, the transparent sea air, the tallest sailing ships and the most legendary naval battles. When his contemporaries wanted to praise a sea painting especially highly, they called it “worthy of Aivazovsky’s hand!” The phrase survives to this day.

Semyon Arkadevich Ekshtut is a Doctor of Philosophical Science and Director of the Center for Historical Illustration of the Russian historical journal Rodina (Motherland). He is the author of more than 80 works, including monographs on Alexander I and the Decembrists.