An essay based on the painting by I. Aivazovsky “Moonlit Night. Bath in Feodosia.” Presentation: I. Aivazovsky “The Ninth Wave of Exposition about I.K. Aivazovsky
Ivan (Hovhannes) Konstantinovich Aivazovsky was born in Feodosia on July 17 (30), 1817. The boy began to be interested in art early; he was particularly interested in music and drawing. In 1833, Aivazovsky was enrolled in the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky is rightfully considered an outstanding Russian painter. All works of this great artist are known all over the world.
Many paintings by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky are dedicated to the sea. The artist emphasizes the nature of the sea elements, so accurately and realistically
conveys everything related to the sea. One of the most famous paintings is “Moonlit Night. Bath in Feodosia.” This work was created in 1853. The painting was painted in oil on canvas.
We see the night sea on this canvas. Sky, clouds, ship. The light of the full moon illuminates the surroundings. And everything seems somewhat unreal, ephemeral, even mystical. At the same time, we can distinguish the smallest details, so the reality of everything depicted in the picture is undeniable.
In the foreground of the picture we see a quiet calm sea. The bright lunar path seems so mysterious and attractive. Boundless
the sea goes beyond the horizon. A girl is floating on the right side of the lunar path. How is she not scared here alone... After all, the sea just looks so calm and serene. But in fact, everyone knows the treachery of the sea elements. However, maybe it's a mermaid? And the sea element is her home. The legends about these amazingly beautiful sea inhabitants immediately come to mind. Maybe they really exist. And the picture shows one of them? But it immediately becomes clear that these are just dreams.
There is a bathing house on the shore. Here the door is open, it’s light inside. We see a girl. She is probably waiting for her friend, who is swimming in the sea. If you look closely, you can see the embankment on the right side of the picture. It is illuminated by bright moonlight. A little further away there are houses. They are hidden in the darkness, not a light is visible in the windows.
In the center of the picture we see sailboats. One of them is brightly lit by moonlight. There are ships at the pier. But they are not so easy to see, they are hidden by the darkness of the night.
The sky seems special, it is brightly illuminated by moonlight. The clouds are so clearly visible.
They seem so tangible, as if you could touch them with your hand.
The beauty of the night sea and sky is amazing. I want to look at this picture again and again. And every time you manage to see something completely new in it.
There is something unusual, mystical in the picture. Here, on the one hand, there is a rare sense of calm and harmony. But on the other hand, one can feel the formidable power of the sea, which at any moment can turn from calm and serene into formidable and dangerous. And then the rampant nature will make you forget about everything. After all, a person is defenseless against the power of the sea elements. But now I don’t want to think about it. The sea is so gentle and calm. It seems that amazing sea freshness is reaching us.
This painting is part of the Crimean cycle created by the artist. Currently the work is in the Taganrog Art Museum.
Glossary:
- essay based on Aivazovsky’s painting Sea Moonlit Night
- essay on Aivazovsky’s painting Moonlit Night Bath in Feodosia
– essay on the painting Moonlight Night Bath in Feodosia
– essay based on Aivazovsky’s painting Moonlit Night
- essay on the painting Moonlight Night
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ABSTRACT PLAN
1. Childhood and adolescence of Aivazovsky.
2. The artist’s amazing “skill to convey with equal strength and persuasiveness a furious storm and the calm surface of the sea...”
3. Spiritual work before painting the card “The Ninth Wave”. “When Aivazovsky changed his mind and felt it all, then his hands themselves reached out to the palette and brushes.”
4. General composition of the picture.
5. General color of the picture
6. Bold innovation of Aivazovsky.
7. Harmony of romanticism and realism in the picture.
8. Aivazovsky is an unsurpassed master of seascape.
9. Aivazovsky’s artistic method.
10. The paintings “The Ninth Wave”, “The Black Sea” and “Among the Waves” are the pinnacle of Aivazovsky’s painting skills.
When I was 10 years old, my parents took me to the sea for the first time. Since then, I just fell in love with him, which is probably why my favorite artist is I.K. Aivazovsky and his painting “The Ninth Wave.”
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky is one of the largest Russian painters of the 19th century. Aivazovsky was born on July 29 (17 according to the old calendar) in Feodosia in the family of a bankrupt Armenian merchant. There are still legends in the city about a boy who drew with samovar coal on the whitewashed walls of the houses of the Armenian settlement. He grew up in Feodosia, and his most vivid impressions were associated with the sea; That’s why he devoted all his work to depicting the sea.
With the assistance of the governor, the talented teenager was admitted to the Tauride Gymnasium in 1831, and in 1833 he was enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts of St. Petersburg, from which he graduated with a large gold medal and the right to travel to the Crimea and then to Europe.
The position of leading master was given to him immediately. Wide public recognition accompanied Aivazovsky from the very first steps. As a twenty-three-year-old boy, he was already famous. Not only his compatriots, but also foreigners unanimously and enthusiastically recognized his superiority in marine painting. Not a single artist rose to the level of perceiving the sea as a living element, and only Aivazovsky, endowing it with all the shades of his feelings and experiences, was able to convey on canvas the poetic idea of his people about the sea as a formidable force calling for courage, bravery, and struggle.
The image of a raging sea element excited the imagination of many Russian poets. This is clearly reflected in Baratynsky’s poems. Willingness to fight and faith in final victory are heard in his poems:
So now, ocean, I thirst for your storms
Worry, rise to the stone edges,
It makes me happy, your menacing, wild roar,
Like the call of a long-desired battle,
As a powerful enemy, I feel somewhat flattered anger...
This is how the sea entered the formed consciousness of young Aivazovsky.
The artist's skill is amazing. With equal strength and persuasiveness, he was able to convey a furious storm and the quiet surface of the sea, the brilliance of the sun's rays sparkling on the water and the ripples of rain, the transparency of the sea depths and the snow-white foam of the waves. “The movement of living elements is elusive to the brush,” said Aivazovsky, “to paint lightning, a gust of wind, a splash of a wave is unthinkable from life. He was convinced that “a person not gifted with memory, who retains the impressions of living nature, can be an excellent copyist, a living photographic apparatus, but never a true artist.” He himself constantly observed the sea, but almost never painted from life.
Aivazovsky managed to embody in marine painting the feelings and thoughts that worried the leading people of his time, which gave deep meaning and social significance to his art.
In recent years, many close people have passed away, but Belinsky’s death especially struck Aivazovsky. How many noble, beautiful thoughts Belinsky inspired in him during heated debates!
Among his previous paintings, Aivazovsky found “Those escaping after a shipwreck.” Belinsky once praised this picture. She talked about courage. And now the time has come for courageous people to rise up to fight for freedom.
The world was no longer as serene as it seemed to Aivazovsky just recently. Now is not the time to paint sea views that breathe peace. In Europe there are barricades. In St. Petersburg, Kukolnikov called Belinsky a barricader. And Vecchi, the dear friend of his youth, also became a barricader, joining Giuseppe Garibaldi.
He will paint a picture that will excite and shock people. Belinsky spoke about such art...
But freedom did not celebrate its victory for long. The revolution was suppressed. Aivazovsky’s hot idea also went out. He never started the painting. Days, weeks, months passed, a year passed...
One day an Italian merchant ship came to Feodosia. The captain came to visit Aivazovsky. He said in a confidential whisper that the Italians were waiting for Garibaldi to return from a foreign land and believed in the coming victory...
Thoughts about the unpainted picture awakened with renewed vigor. Aivazovsky closed himself off from everyone in the workshop. Days passed, but he did not touch his palette or brushes. He sat in a chair for a long time with his eyes closed, his mind working tirelessly. My childhood came to mind, how during vacations fishermen talk about terrible storms and shipwrecks. Youth arose: wanderings in foreign lands, seas and oceans. One day, on the way from England to Spain in the Bay of Biscay, the ship was caught in a severe storm. All the passengers were mad with fear. The artist also felt fear. But even during these hours the ability to admire the beautiful, menacing picture of the storm did not leave him. Miraculously, they then reached Lisbon harbor.
Other storms also came to mind: in the Gulf of Finland, on the Black Sea. People died, but people also won. Those who were braver and did not give in to death, who passionately wanted to live, won. The storm retreated before the man's courage. Human will! He knew about it firsthand, but saw it with his own eyes: at sea, on land.
When Aivazovsky changed his mind and experienced all this, then his hands themselves reached out to the palette and brushes. Aivazovsky called his painting “The Ninth Wave.”
The thematic content of The Ninth Wave is built on a complex contrast between a dramatic plot and a bright, major, picturesque embodiment of the image.
The painting depicts an early morning after a stormy night. The sun was rising over the stormy ocean. Its rays opened wide the bright scarlet gates to the coming day. And now it has only become possible to see everything that was recently hidden by the darkness of the night. Huge waves foam, their furious crests still rise. One of these waves is the highest. Her name is the ninth wave. And in the foreground of the picture, on the fragment of the mast of a ship broken by a storm, a small group of people is being saved.
The artist contrasted the fury of the elements with the courage and bravery of people fleeing on a piece of mast after a shipwreck. The crests of the shafts rise above their heads. With terrible power and anger, she is about to fall on the castaways. And tired, exhausted, they frantically cling to each other, hoping in mutual support to find salvation from the death looming over them. The theme of man's struggle with the blind power of the elements is extremely characteristic of the painting of romanticism. In Aivazovsky, the tragic conflict between people and nature plays a relatively minor role; the artist’s entire attention is focused on the life of the elements itself.
Aivazovsky constructed his picture in such a way and introduced the brightest and most sonorous colors into it that, despite the drama of what was happening, he made one admire the beauty of the raging sea. There is no sense of doom or tragedy in the film.
The artist found the exact means to depict the greatness, power and beauty of the sea element. The picture is filled with deep inner sound. It is full of light, air and is completely permeated with the rays of the sun, giving it an optimistic character. This is greatly facilitated by the color scheme of the picture. It is painted with the brightest colors of the palette. Its color includes a wide range of shades of yellow, orange, pink, purple sky and green, blue and violet water. The bright, major, colorful scale of the picture sounds like a jubilant, joyful hymn to the courage of people defeating the blind forces of a terrible, but beautiful in its formidable greatness, element.
The viewer can immediately imagine what a terrible thunderstorm passed at night, what disaster the ship’s crew suffered and how the sailors died.
Who are these unfortunate people, how did they get here? Just yesterday morning their ship left the harbor into the open ocean. It was a clear, sunny day, the high, clear azure of the sky shone serenely. The calm expanse of the ocean beckoned to distant, unknown shores. But in the evening the wind rose, thunderclouds quickly clouded the sky. The ocean became agitated. Blinding lightning burned through the sky. Thunderclaps shook the air. The shafts rose in a circle, a continuous circulation of the shafts. They surrounded the ship closer and closer and finally rushed together to attack it. Only flashes of lightning illuminated this mortal battle with the formidable elements. The roar of thunderclaps and roaring waves drowned out the crash of a breaking ship and the screams of people dying in the depths of the sea. And those whose hearts were filled with courage decided not to give up. Several friends stayed together all the time and did not lose each other even when the ship was sinking. They clung to the wreckage of the ship's mast, encouraged each other in the roaring chaos and vowed to exert all their strength and endure until the saving morning...
And they survived. The terrible night is over. The sun's rays colored the heavy waves. The sun entered into an alliance with the human will. Life, people have overcome the chaotic darkness of a night storm in the ocean. The storm strains its muscles, tired during the night. But they have already weakened. A little more - and the last, ninth wave will pass.
According to existing belief, every ninth wave during a storm exceeds all previous ones in strength. Huge waves, like mountains, rise and rage in the boundless expanse, merging with the sky, across which clouds are rushing, driven by a mad wind. The sun, barely rising above the horizon, breaks through the thick curtain of clouds and pierces the waves, foam and water dust hanging in the air with a golden glow. In his painting the wind really rages and the sea is agitated. With a mighty effort of imagination and creative memory, he created a truthful and impressive image of angry nature.
The motives of movement are captured with amazing accuracy in the picture. Everything in it is engulfed in a swift impulse - the running clouds, the foaming waters, and the figures of people frantically clinging to the mast. This unity of movement gives the image a special completeness and integrity.
The color scheme of the painting was bold and innovative. In comparison with the subtle and restrained color scheme of Russian landscape painters of the first half of the 19th century, “The Ninth Wave” was supposed to amaze viewers with its intense brightness and richness of color combinations. The artist, with sophisticated vigilance, noticed and reproduced the green, white, lilac and blue shades of sea water and humid air, combining them with the golden tone of the reflections of the sun. For Aivazovsky, as for all romantics, color was a means of artistic expression of feelings, and it is in the coloristic structure of The Ninth Wave that the master’s romantically sublime worldview is most clearly embodied.
Despite the fact that “The Ninth Wave” belongs to one of the paintings of Russian landscape painting, which most clearly reflects the features of romanticism, the semantic and pictorial content of the picture was not born in the world of dreams, but was organically formed as a result of the artist’s observations of nature.
“The Ninth Wave” represents the pinnacle of the first, romantic period in his work. Surrendering to his imagination, he created one of his greatest masterpieces.
This painting found a wide response at the time of its appearance and remains to this day one of the most popular in Russian painting.
In the fall of 1850, he exhibited it in Moscow, at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. People came to see “The Ninth Wave” many times, just as they once went to see “The Last Day of Pompeii.”
The nineteen-year-old young man Ivan Shishkin, who had recently arrived in Moscow from Yelabuga, also saw The Ninth Wave. He stood for a long time, enchanted by the bright green color of the waves, the golden and mauve reflections from the sun breaking through the fog.
The young man could not take his eyes off the wonderful painting. He clearly heard the roar of the sea. And this roar seemed to merge with the roar of centuries-old pines in their native forests near Yelabuga...
And perhaps it was precisely in these moments that another wonderful Russian artist was born spiritually.
The work of Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky arouses great interest and a feeling of deep admiration among viewers. The sea, exalted by him both in storm and calm, fed his imagination throughout the artist’s life.
For Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, the sea has always been synonymous with freedom, personifying strength and courage, calling for confrontation, calling for faith in the high destiny of man, to go towards the goal through trials and troubles.
He devoted his entire life to depicting the sea; he created and raised to great heights a special area of landscape painting - marina, which before Aivazovsky had almost no representatives in Russian art. Aivazovsky is undoubtedly the central figure and greatest master of seascape in Russian art of the 19th century. In this field he was and remains an outstanding and unsurpassed master.
The ability to poetically perceive the most ordinary phenomena in nature is clearly reflected in his works. Whether the artist paints a group of fishermen sorting their nets near a longboat, a moonlit night after a storm, Odessa at moonrise, or the Bay of Naples at dawn, he always finds in the visual image of nature elusive features that evoke poetic or musical associations in our memory.
Aivazovsky's paintings are deeply meaningful and emotionally rich. His picturesque images sometimes rise to broad generalizations, reflecting many aspects of life and advanced ideas of his time. This affected the works with particular clarity, which became the main milestones in the development of his creativity. The paintings “The Ninth Wave” (1850, Russian Museum), “Black Sea” (1881, Tretyakov Gallery) and “Among the Waves” (1898, Aivazovsky Gallery, Feodosia) are the result of many preliminary searches for a certain image of the sea element. These works are the pinnacle of painting Aivazovsky’s mastery. They are still the most popular today, because they reflect the artist’s mastery, ideological orientation and meaningfulness of the artist’s work more clearly than many other paintings.
In preparing this work, materials from the site were used
Question opened 03/10/2018 at 22:35
Embankment of Feodosia, the tiny town of Crimea
peninsula, was full of people walking. The summer of 1897 was hot,
however, in this blessed land the climate rarely disappointed
lovers of sea swimming and sunbathing. Bustling and fussing like
groups of seagulls, this is multilingual, resort-like, bright, cheerful and
a restless current slowly floated along the embankment along the sea,
flowed over the crossing near the station and flowed into the city streets.
An old man was moving along the embankment with a slow, unhurried step.
about eighty years old, with a cane in his dark hand, in a white spacious
suit and straw hat. From time to time he was recognized and politely
welcomed. Among other participants in the southern fashion show is an old man
stood out because he was in no hurry to busily occupy the beds by the water.
His hook-nosed face with oriental features breathed with stern pride.
The old man, squinting, looked at the surf. The sea began immediately
behind the paved embankment, and the old man looked at him greedily, as if
never seen.
Aivazovsky, the most famous marine painter, broke out of the secular
Petersburg whirlwind and returned here, to the city of his childhood.
Here both sand and stones help to work. Incomparable
the pleasure of creativity!
The disappointment of the capital's public, who learned that
a master admired by all of Europe, in the prime of his life and glory
abandoned the capital and went “to the ends of the world.” How do they know what's for him?
to live means to work. And I wanted to do more for Feodosia.
The only positive thing in the tedious glory -
prosperity. At his own expense, Ivan Konstantinovich built several
buildings, improved his native Feodosia, acquired a house-workshop,
it's also an art gallery. Helped in the construction of the port and this iron
road running along the embankment. It was he who insisted that it be near the sea
a low, cozy station has grown up so that the sea is wide, right up to
the horizon flooded the train windows on the left side, promising coolness and
pleasure for the visiting northerner. So that two steps from the carriage
the windows on the right side floated thickets of southern greenery, roofs
fire-breathing eateries, low southern houses receded back.
So that you can immediately jump out of the vestibule and run to the sea
and plunge into the greenish sea wave, enjoy its cool
rustling. And then throw yourself onto the pebbles and with a happy, blissful
sigh, draw all the blessed southern air into your lungs,
saturated with the smells of coffee, fried meat, fish, sea and heated
stone
Aivazovsky smiled with satisfaction. He thanked his
Feodosia, where Hovhannes Gaivazovsky was born (already an adult
he found out that the surname of their ancestors was Ayvazyan), and became the first
marine painter Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky.
The artist turned away from the blinding strip of surf and slowly
walked towards the house standing nearby, noting along the way how
this colorful, multilingual town is colorful: red-coral
tiled roofs, islands of emerald green, gray porous
the stone of ancient fortresses, pieces of the blue sea turning into the sky,
cobalt shadows among the ocher of old two-story houses, picturesque
cracks in old walls, courtyards with barefoot children, a motley crowd,
sailors with the appearance of pirates. Here you will inevitably become an artist,
when Theodosia herself asks for the tip of the brush.
(442 words) According to L. Karavaeva
Creative task
Write a detailed summary.
Describe your favorite piece of art by including it in your story
several facts about the artist's biography.
Feodosia. Roots. Childhood
Ancient Greeks from Miletus in the 6th century. BC e. founded their trading post on the shore of a beautiful bay and named the settlement Feodosia, which means “Gift of the Gods.” Over many centuries, the city experienced periods of glory and wealth; the bay was in full swing with bustling trade, attracting Greeks, Turks, Tatars and Armenians, who played a significant role in its life and in the life of the entire Crimean peninsula. However, by the 19th century, Feodosia had turned into a small provincial town. It was here that the merchant Gevorg Gayvazyan moved from Galicia (then the territory of Poland), a descendant of an ancient Armenian family who left their homeland (Turkish Armenia) back in the 17th century, fleeing the genocide unleashed by the Turks.
It should be noted that Nikolai Kuzmin’s book of memoirs about his friend Ivan Aivazovsky, which was published in 1901, contains information about his Turkish roots, recorded from the artist’s own words. The heroic-romantic story tells that the grandfather of the great marine painter was a Turk and died in a fierce battle with soldiers of the Russian army during the capture of the Bendery fortress. “Among their victims was the secretary of the Bendery Pasha. Mortally struck by one Russian grenadier, he was bleeding, clutching a baby in his hands, who was about to suffer the same fate. The Russian bayonet was already raised over the young Turk when one Armenian held back the punishing hand with the exclamation: “Stop! This is my son! He is a Christian! The noble lie served as a salvation, and the child was spared. This child was my father. The good Armenian did not end his good deed with this, he became the second father of a Muslim orphan, baptizing him under the name of Constantine, and gave him the surname Gaivazovsky, from the word Gaizov, which in Turkish means secretary.” And then, with his Armenian benefactor, the boy moved near Lviv, received a good education and started trading.
There is no documentary evidence to support this data. It is known for sure that after moving to Feodosia, the artist’s father began to write his surname in the Polish manner: “Gayvazovsky” (the Polonized form of the Armenian surname Ayvazyan), and his relatives owned large land properties in the Lvov region; however, no documents have survived that cast a brighter light on the origins of Aivazovsky. The artist himself, in his autobiography, recalled about his father that, due to a quarrel with his brothers in his youth, he moved from Galicia to the Danube principalities (Moldova, Wallachia), where he engaged in trade, and from there to the Crimea. Having settled in Feodosia, Konstantin Grigorievich Gaivazovsky (1771–1841) married a local Armenian beauty Repsima (Agrafena) (1784–1860), and from this marriage three daughters and two sons were born, for whom fate had prepared a great future. The fame of the Aivazovsky brothers in the world is incomparable, but both of them are valuable for national cultures.
Ancient Feodosia was severely destroyed by the war of 1812 and fell into complete decline due to the plague epidemic. In the drawings of that time, you can see, on the site of a once prosperous city, piles of ruins with barely visible traces of deserted streets and isolated surviving houses. The well-established business of the Gaivazovsky family is also a thing of the past. However, fluent in Armenian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish and Greek, the bankrupt merchant of the 3rd guild Gaivazovsky began to help the townspeople draw up court documents and complaints and at the same time serve as headman at the Feodosia bazaar. The Theodosians knew him as a man of amazing honesty and trusted him to conduct various litigations. Despite his merchant activity, Gaivazovsky was drawn to education and the arts, and loved to write poetry and prose in Armenian, which his wife heartily read at family and public celebrations. In addition, Repsime was a skilled embroiderer, and her skill more than once helped the family out in difficult times. Most local dandies certainly had items embroidered by her skillful hand in their wardrobes.
On July 17 (July 29, new style), 1817, priest Mkrtich of the Armenian church of Feodosia recorded that “Hovhannes, son of Gevorg Ayvazyan” was born - the future world-famous artist Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, who always signed his letters in Armenian “Hovhannes Ayvazyan."
Both their eldest son Sargis (1812–1880) and their youngest son Hovhannes were raised by their parents in national patriarchal norms, instilling in them love and respect for their elders and the people around them. Family traditions played a huge role in the development of the brothers, who throughout their lives took an active part in public life and were involved in charity work. At first they studied at the Armenian parish school of Feodosia, but in 1826 their paths diverged. The large family was in such a difficult financial situation that Gevorg Ayvazyan gave his eldest son Sargis (later as a monk - Gabriel) to an Armenian merchant to enroll him in the Murat-Rafaelian Lyceum on the island of St. Lazarus in Venice. A few years later, Sargis took monastic vows and was included in the Mekhitarist brotherhood (Armenian Catholic monastic order). Already at the age of 22, he received the priesthood and a master's degree in theology. Gabriel became one of the best teachers at the Lyceum, having no equal in linguistics and philology: he spoke twenty European and Oriental languages, which allowed him to translate and publish French, Italian and Russian works in Armenian. In 1836–1837 Gabriel wrote and published a number of his works in Venice, including a large dictionary of the Armenian language in two volumes, a historical description of the “History of Armenia” in Italian, and “History of the Ottoman Empire” in two parts. It seemed that the brothers' paths had diverged far, but they were yet to meet...
And if Gabriel had a penchant for languages, then Hovhannes, as a small boy, showed exceptional abilities in drawing and music - he played the violin quite well, although he was self-taught. He had enough time for everything, despite the fact that from the age of 10 he worked as a “boy” in a city coffee shop - all the more or less valuable things from the house had already been sold, and need was increasingly at the door. In the coffee shop, the rhapsode Haidar often played the violin, and from him Hovhannes learned many melodies and songs and, instead of a musician, he himself entertained the visitors. And one day one of the captains fulfilled the boy’s cherished dream - he gave him a violin.
Like all the guys, Hovhannes spent a lot of time at the sea, which fascinated him with the constantly changing color of the waves and majestic ships. And from the terrace of the modest parental house, which stood on the outskirts of Feodosia, a magnificent panorama of the Feodosian Gulf and the Crimean steppe with ancient mounds, the Arabat Spit and the barren Sivash, shimmering with haze on the horizon, was visible.
Hovhannes also spent a lot of time near the ruins of medieval fortress walls with towers and loopholes, which surrounded the city in a double ring. He often found ancient shards and coins turned green by time. With its beauty and picturesqueness, he was attracted by the ancient buildings of ancient Armenian and Greek churches, Karaite kenas and Jewish synagogues, Turkish and Tatar mosques, stone fountains... All this excited the boy’s imagination, carried him in his dreams to distant sea voyages and unexplored countries. In the Feodosia roadstead, in addition to tarred fishing feluccas, warships of the Black Sea Fleet often anchored. With bated breath, Hovhannes looked at the magnificent, handsome brig “Mercury,” whose crew won the unequal battle, and listened with rapture to the stories of the seasoned sailors. The romance of victories won at sea, the harsh stories about the national liberation struggle of the Greek people against the Ottoman yoke (1821–1829) found an echo in his soul, because his native Armenia was languishing under the rule of the Turks. All this early awakened in Hovhannes the desire for creativity and determined many of the unique features of his talent, which were clearly expressed in the process of forming his talent.
When the boy saw a ship appearing on the open sea slowly sailing towards the shore and the sun - depending on the time of day - changing the color of its white sails from pink to scarlet - a strong desire grew in him to draw this ship confidently cutting through the waves. And one day Hovhannes chose a piece of samovar coal and began to draw a ship on the white wall of the house. The father, having caught his son doing this, did not scold him, but gave him a piece of yellowed thick paper and a well-sharpened pencil. But no matter how the boy took care of such a valuable gift, the paper soon ran out.
In those years, Hovhannes painted a lot and with enthusiasm: he painted people, landscapes of the Feodosian roadstead, the sea and sailing ships in the roadstead, copied folk pictures and engravings with episodes of the uprising and portraits of heroes of the Greek people. In his declining years, the famous artist recalled: “The first paintings I saw, when a spark of fiery love for painting flared up in me, were lithographs depicting the exploits of heroes in the late twenties, fighting the Turks for the liberation of Greece. Subsequently, I learned that sympathy for the Greeks overthrowing the Turkish yoke was then expressed by all the poets of Europe: Byron, Pushkin, Hugo, Lamartine... The thought of this great country often visited me in the form of battles on land and sea.”
On every sheet of paper that came to hand (and even on the pages of books, for which he was beaten), Hovhannes depicted and copied what he saw, and when there was not enough paper, the most suitable place for drawing was again the whitewashed walls of his parents’ house.
From the book Traveler through the Universes author Voloshin Maximilian AlexandrovichPrayer for the city (Feodosia in the spring of 1918 under the Bolsheviks) Feodosia under the Bolsheviks did not resemble any other Russian city. It was the only defenseless and open port on the Black Sea. People fled there from all its coasts. Every day her port was broken into
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Feodosia celebrates the anniversary of a man whose name is forever associated with the city - 200 years since the birth of the great marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky. Recently, a memorial sign dedicated to the famous artist was unveiled in the city: another thank you from descendants.
All the awards did not fit on the coat
Did you know that Aivazovsky was the most “decorated” artist of the Russian Empire? - which does not often happen - recognition, honors and fame came to him during his lifetime. Some of the awards of the famous marine painter can be seen in the Feodosia Art Gallery named after Aivazovsky.
“By the grace of God, We, Alexander III, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Tsar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland... Privy Councilor Ivan Aivazovsky... In consideration of your zealous service and concerns for the prosperity of Feodosia, to which you devoted yourself simultaneously with the acquisition of worldwide fame for your artistic works ... We have granted you a Knight of the Imperial and Royal Order of our White Eagle...”
Portrait of Aivazovsky with orders and stars. Photo:
One of the ceremonial portraits of Ivan Konstantinovich, with awards, has survived to this day. Of course, Aivazovsky did not wear all the orders, they simply would not have fit on his frock coat - after all, he had all the highest awards of Russia, the same “White Eagle”, “Alexander Nevsky”, not to mention the “Vladimirs” and “Annas”. Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, a silver star with a monogram and the inscription “For Labor and the Fatherland”, as it were, symbolizes Aivazovsky’s entire life. And he devoted himself to his work selflessly - according to his own statement, he created six thousand paintings in his life; and served the fatherland for the good - it is worth remembering his paintings glorifying the Russian fleet.
Aivazovsky was the first foreign artist to be awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor - his exhibition at the Louvre made such a strong impression on the French. The painting “Chaos,” one of two painted by Aivazovsky in an atypical mystical genre, was acquired by the Vatican, and Pope Gregory XVI awarded the artist a gold medal. Listing all of Ivan Konstantinovich’s awards is a long task. Although there were those that he did not like to remember. In 1857, Aivazovsky visited Constantinople and gave one of his paintings to his compatriot. And he, in turn, presented it to the Sultan, who appreciated painting. The Turkish ruler was so impressed by the canvas that he sent an order to Feodosia: several views of the Bosphorus by Aivazovsky. The artist painted forty works for the Sultan, and, by the way, the peace treaty between Turkey and Russia at the end of the Russian-Turkish war was signed in a hall decorated with paintings by Aivazovsky. The highest Turkish award, the Order of Osman, was awarded to the painter. And several decades later, he threw it, along with other Turkish awards, into the sea - after the monstrous massacre of Armenians carried out in Turkey by its new ruler. Aivazovsky even considered it necessary to notify the Turkish consul about what he did with the awards, adding that the Sultan could do the same with his paintings.
Feodosia Art Gallery named after I.K. Aivazovsky
The museum houses the so-called “addresses” - folders made artistically and decorated with silver, which were presented for anniversaries and special occasions. There are also Aivazovsky’s personal belongings here - an elegant travel album that Aivazovsky carried with him, a tiny, postage stamp-sized miniature with a sea view: this is... a brooch. Ivan Konstantinovich gave such trinkets of his own making to his friends and acquaintances.
The good genius of Feodosia
Orders and stars of Ivan Aivazovsky. Photo: Feodosia Art Gallery named after I.K. Aivazovsky
Ivan Konstantinovich had this trait: he was easily carried away, easily moved from words to deeds, and usually achieved success. Here's an example: in 1853-1856, Aivazovsky became interested in archeology. And in his own way, he decided to take part in the scientific discussion of historians about where exactly ancient Feodosia was located. He was sure that most of it was on the territory of the existing city. And, in fact, why debate - we need to dig! With his characteristic energy, Aivazovsky received funds from the treasury and began excavating mounds in the vicinity of the city.
This is how the curator of the Museum of Antiquities, Evgeniy Frantsevich de Villeneuve, reported the first results: “22 mounds were opened... In most of them, only broken amphorae, ash, coal and burnt bones were found. The following items were found in four mounds: gold necklaces, earrings, a woman's head, a chain with a sphinx, a sphinx with a woman's head, a bull's head, plates; silver bracelets; clay figurines, medallions, vessels and sarcophagus; silver and bronze coins." But then, in one of the mounds, on the southernmost elevated point of Cape Ilya, a female burial was opened. The jewelry eloquently indicated that the woman belonged to the “cream of society”: they were not just gold, but also skillfully made. It was they who ended up in the Hermitage.
During the life of the great marine painter, not a single significant event for the city took place without his participation. Aspiring artists from different parts of Russia came here in the summer to Feodosia. The construction of a concert hall, a library, a new building for the Feodosia Museum of Antiquities - these are all, as they would say today, his projects. And how he advocated for the construction of a railway line from Dzhankoy to Feodosia! It appeared in 1892.
In Crimea, water was always in short supply, and Eastern Crimea regularly suffered from drought. In 1887, Aivazovsky addressed the city duma with a proposal: “Not being able to continue to remain a witness to the terrible disaster that the population of my native city experiences from lack of water from year to year, I give him the eternal ownership of 50 thousand buckets per day of clean water from the property.” Subash spring for me.” In the same year, work began on laying a water pipeline - and a few years later, a fountain with drinking water in an oriental style appeared in the city.
Feodosians remember Aivazovsky not just as a great artist, a man of extraordinary talent and ability to work. For them, he was the kind genius of his hometown.
