Unknown Aivazovsky: Mesmerizing winter landscapes of the famous marine painter. Winter landscapes by Ivan Aivazovsky We talked about the painting, it’s time for biographical facts

These are graphic self-portraits of Aivazovsky. Perhaps he is unrecognizable here. And he looks more like not his own picturesque images (see below), but his good friend, with whom he traveled around Italy in his youth - Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The self-portrait on the left is like Gogol, composing “Dead Souls” at a table littered with drafts!

Even more interesting is the self-portrait on the right. Why not with a palette and brushes, but with a violin? Because the violin was Aivazovsky’s faithful friend for many years. No one remembered who gave it to 10-year-old Hovhannes, a boy from a large and poor family of Armenian immigrants in Feodosia. Of course, parents couldn’t afford to hire a teacher. But that wasn't necessary. Hovhannes was taught to play by traveling musicians at the Feodosia bazaar. His hearing turned out to be excellent. Aivazovsky could pick out any tune, any melody by ear.

The aspiring artist brought the violin with him to St. Petersburg. I played for the soul. Often at a party, when Hovhannes made useful acquaintances and began to visit society, he was asked to play the violin. Possessing an easy-going character, Aivazovsky never refused to play. In the biography of composer Mikhail Glinka, written by Vsevolod Uspensky, there is the following fragment: “Once at the Puppeteer, Glinka met with a student of the Academy of Arts, Aivazovsky. He masterfully sang a wild Crimean song, sitting Tatar-style on the floor, swaying and holding the violin to his chin. Glinka really liked Aivazovsky’s Tatar melodies; his imagination was attracted to the east from his youth... Two melodies eventually entered the Lezginka, and the third - into the Ratmir scene in the third act of the opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila”.

Aivazovsky will take his violin with him everywhere. On the ships of the Baltic squadron, his playing entertained the sailors; the violin sang to them about warm seas and a better life. In St. Petersburg, seeing his future wife Julia Grevs for the first time at a social reception (she was just the governess of the master's children), Aivazovsky did not dare to introduce himself - instead, he would again pick up the violin and belt out a serenade in Italian.

An interesting question - why in the picture Aivazovsky does not rest the violin on his chin, but holds it like a cello? Biographer Yulia Andreeva explains this feature as follows: “according to numerous testimonies of contemporaries, he held the violin in an oriental manner, resting it on his left knee. This way he could play and sing at the same time.”

Self-portrait
1874, 74×58 cm

And we present this self-portrait of Aivazovsky simply for comparison: unlike the not so widely known previous ones, the reader is probably familiar with it. But if in the first ones Aivazovsky reminded us of Gogol, then in this one, with well-groomed sideburns, he reminded us of Pushkin. By the way, this was precisely the opinion of Natalya Nikolaevna, the poet’s wife. When Aivazovsky was presented to the Pushkin couple at an exhibition at the Academy of Arts, Natalya Nikolaevna kindly noted that the artist’s appearance very much reminded her of the portraits of young Alexander Sergeevich.



Petersburg. Crossing the Neva
Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovski
1870s, 22×16 cm

At the first (and if we ignore the legends, then the only) meeting, Pushkin asked Aivazovsky two questions. The first is more than predictable for a dating situation: where is the artist from? But the second one is unexpected and even somewhat familiar. Pushkin asked Aivazovsky if he, a southern man, was not freezing in St. Petersburg?

If only Pushkin knew how right he turned out to be! All the winters at the Academy of Arts, young Hovhannes was really terribly, simply catastrophically cold.

There are drafts in the halls and classrooms, teachers wrap their backs in down scarves. 16-year-old Hovhannes Aivazovsky, accepted into the class of Professor Maxim Vorobyov, has numb fingers from the cold. He is chilly, wraps himself in a paint-stained jacket that is not warm at all, and coughs all the time.

It is especially difficult at night. A moth-eaten blanket does not allow you to warm up. All members are chilled, tooth does not touch tooth, and for some reason the ears are especially cold. When the cold prevents you from sleeping, student Aivazovsky remembers Feodosia and the warm sea.

Staff doctor Overlach writes reports to the President of the Academy Olenin about the unsatisfactory health of Hovhannes: “Academician Aivazovsky, having been transferred several years before to St. Petersburg from the southern region of Russia and precisely from the Crimea, since his very stay here he has always felt unhealthy and has already been used many times I was in the academic infirmary, suffering, both before and now, chest pain, dry cough, shortness of breath when climbing stairs and a strong heartbeat.”

Is this why “Crossing the Neva,” a rare St. Petersburg landscape for Aivazovsky’s work, looks like it makes your teeth ache from the imaginary cold? It was written in 1877, the Academy is long gone, but the feeling of the piercing cold of Northern Palmyra remains. Giant ice floes rose on the Neva. The Admiralty Needle appears through the cold, hazy colors of the purple sky. It's cold for the tiny people in the cart. It's chilly, alarming - but also fun. And it seems that there is so much new, unknown, interesting - there, ahead, behind the veil of frosty air.

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Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky was a talented, creative person. Many people associate him with the sea, but true art connoisseurs know that he painted not only seascapes. It is difficult to list all the directions of the artist’s work, but in each he shows himself as an artist in all his glory.

Winter landscapes of Aivazovsky

Winter landscape. 1876

Paintings on this topic are a real rarity; collecting them even in electronic form is not easy. Looking at any winter landscape by Aivazovsky, it is difficult to disagree with the fact that a real master had a hand in the canvas. The works are a true embodiment of the beauty of natural phenomena.

Don’t think that if we are talking about winter, then there should be one white color. In the winter painting, Aivazovsky uses shades of white, blue, pink, gray, and black. Their skillful combination makes it possible to convey the “deafening” silence and charm of a natural phenomenon. The canvas is filled with life; looking at it, you get the feeling of the wind blowing on your skin.

The picture could not be done without human figures. The artist does not describe them in detail; from the outline it is clear that they are a man and a woman. There are more people in the background. Some are in a hurry to run errands, while others go for a walk to enjoy the beauty. It would be a mistake not to note in the description of Aivazovsky’s winter landscape that the entire picture is illuminated by the light emanating from the snow-covered tree crowns. Above all this beauty rises a silent sky. The artist tried to convey to us all his feelings that arise when admiring natural beauty.

Where is Aivazovsky’s winter landscape stored?

Nowadays, interest in the work of a Russian artist with Armenian roots does not subside. His paintings are still sold at auctions. The price of some exceeds several million US dollars. Many art connoisseurs are wondering where Aivazovsky’s Winter Landscape is kept. It is known that it was sold at the Russian Sotheby's auction.

The marine painter’s canvases are in the best museums in the world; Russian museums also have them, but they are not the most outstanding.

The largest collections are presented in places such as:

• Feodosia Art Gallery;
• Tretyakovskaya;
• State Russian Museum;
• Peterhof Museum-Reserve.

No one remains indifferent when they see Ivan Aivazovsky’s Winter Landscape, painted in the 1880s.

Despite the fact that the artist had Armenian roots, he was considered a Russian painter, because the national politics of that time were very different from ours. In imperial Russia, everyone was considered Russian. There is a lot of information on Wikipedia about Aivazovsky and his Winter Landscape.

We talked about the picture, it's time for biographical facts.

Night in Feodosia. 1887
Cardboard, oil. 10 × 7 cm. The landscape is embedded in a photographic portrait of Ivan Aivazovsky. Department of Manuscripts, Tretyakov Gallery

The artist, still famous to this day, was born in the family of a merchant; it was in the summer of 1817. Until 1812, the Aivazovsky family lived in prosperity, but with the advent of the plague, things went very badly for Ivan’s father, and he went bankrupt. Aivazovsky Jr. was fond of drawing since childhood; how his drawings caught the eye of a local architect is kept silent, but this changed the course of events.

Just like the description of Aivazovsky’s Winter Landscape, his life also attracts the attention of art connoisseurs. After studying at the Simferopol gymnasium, he was accepted into the Imperial Academy of Painting. In 1835, young Hovhannes received his first awards for paintings, these were two silver medals. Having appreciated the young man’s talent, he was assigned as a student of a French landscape painter who was fashionable at that time. But he forbade Hovhannes to paint on his own, and when the young artist violated the ban, he fell into disgrace, and his paintings were removed from the exhibition.

I.K. Aivazovsky. Winter landscape, 1876
The painting "Winter Landscape" was sold at the Russian auction at Sotheby's.

Mill, 1874

Winter landscape, 1874

Winter landscape. Private collection

St. Isaac's Cathedral on a frosty day
The painting "St. Isaac's Cathedral on a Frosty Day" was sold at Christie's auction.

Winter convoy on the way, 1857. Smolensk Art Gallery

Winter scene in Little Russia

Winter view

A short biographical note: Ivan Konstantinovich Ayvazyan was born on July 29, 1817 in Feodosia in the family of the Armenian market head Konstantin (Gevorg) Ayvazyan. Thanks to the efforts of Feodosia mayor A.I. Treasurer, a gifted young man, entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1833. Soon the young talented painter met leading artists, writers, musicians: Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Glinka, Bryullov. Since 1840, the artist began to sign his paintings with the name “Aivazovsky”. At the age of 27 he became an academician of landscape painting at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Traveling to different countries and sailing the seas, participating in landing operations of the Black Sea Fleet off the Caucasian coast, made Aivazovsky a highly professional marine painter. He didn’t want to live in the capital city - he bought a plot of land in his beloved Feodosia and built a house with an art workshop there. According to his last will, Aivazovsky was buried in Feodosia, in the courtyard of the Church of St. Sergius, where he was baptized and where he was married. The tombstone inscription - the words of the 5th century historian Movsese Khorenatsi, carved in ancient Armenian - reads: “Born mortal, left behind an immortal memory.”

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Ivan Kostantinovich Aivazovsky is the most outstanding Armenian artist of the 19th century, Hovhannes Ayvazyan.
Aivazovsky's ancestors were from Galician Armenians who moved to Galicia from Turkish Armenia in the 18th century. There is also a family legend that there were Turks among his ancestors: the artist’s father told him that the artist’s great-grandfather on the female side was the son of a Turkish military leader and, as a child, during the capture of Azov by Russian troops in 1696, he was saved from death by a certain Armenian who he was baptized and adopted.

Ivan Aivazovsky discovered artistic and musical abilities from childhood. He taught himself to play the violin. The Feodosian architect Yakov Koch was the first to notice the boy’s artistic abilities. He gave him paper, pencils, paints, taught him skills, and helped him enroll in the Feodosia district school. Then Aivazovsky graduated from the Simferopol gymnasium and was admitted at public expense to the Imperial Academy of Arts of St. Petersburg. He was assigned to the fashionable French landscape painter Philippe Tanner. But Tanner forbade Aivazovsky to work independently. Despite this, on the advice of Professor Alexander Ivanovich Sauerweid, he managed to prepare several paintings for the exhibition of the Academy of Arts. Tanner complained about Aivazovsky’s arbitrariness to Emperor Nicholas I; by order of the Tsar, all paintings were removed from the exhibition, despite rave reviews from critics.

The conflict was neutralized thanks to Sauerweid, in whose class six months later an aspiring young artist was assigned to study naval military painting. In 1837, Aivazovsky received a Grand Gold Medal for the painting “Calm.” This gave him the right to a two-year trip to Crimea and Europe. There, in addition to creating seascapes, he was engaged in battle painting and even participated in military operations on the coast of Circassia. As a result, he painted the painting “Detachment Landing in the Length of Subashi,” which was acquired by Nicholas I. At the end of the summer of 1839, he returned to St. Petersburg, received a certificate of graduation from the Academy, his first rank and personal nobility.

In 1840 he went to Rome. For his paintings of the Italian period he received the Gold Medal of the Paris Academy of Arts. In 1842 he went to Holland, and from there to England, France, Portugal, and Spain. During the journey, the ship on which the artist was sailing was caught in a storm and almost sank in the Bay of Biscay. A message about his death even appeared in Parisian newspapers. After a four-year journey in the fall of 1844, Aivazovsky returned to Russia and became a painter of the Main Naval Staff, and from 1947 - a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and was also a member of the European academies of Rome, Paris, Florence, Amsterdam and Stuttgart.
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky painted mainly seascapes. His career was very successful. He was awarded many orders and received the rank of rear admiral. In total, the artist painted more than 6 thousand works.

From 1845 he lived in Feodosia, where with the money he earned he opened an art school, which later became one of the artistic centers of Novorossiya, and was the initiator of the construction of the Feodosia - Dzhankoy railway, built in 1892. He was actively involved in the affairs of the city and its improvement.
At his own expense, he built a new building for the Feodosia Museum of Antiquities, and was elected a full member of the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities for his services to archeology.

In 1848, Ivan Konstantinovich got married. His wife was Yulia Yakovlevna Grevs, an Englishwoman, the daughter of a staff doctor who was in Russian service. They had four daughters. But due to Aivazovsky’s reluctance to live in the capital, Yulia Yakovlevna left her husband 12 years later. However, the marriage was dissolved only in 1877. In 1882, Aivazovsky met Anna Nikitichna Sarkisova. Aivazovsky saw Anna Nikitichna at the funeral of her husband, a famous Feodosian merchant. The beauty of the young widow struck Ivan Konstantinovich. A year later they got married.

The texture of the canvas, high-quality paints and large-format printing allow our reproductions of Ivan Aivazovsky to be as good as the original. The canvas will be stretched on a special stretcher, after which the painting can be framed in the baguette of your choice.

First of all, Ivan Aivazovsky He was remembered by posterity as an outstanding marine painter. He was excellent at seascapes, despite the fact that the artist never painted them on the open sea. But in addition to marinas, Ivan Konstantinovich’s collection included paintings with “land” subjects. Aivazovsky’s winter landscapes, which fascinate from the very first second, have become a real rarity.

Most people associate the name of Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky with paintings on a marine theme, but true connoisseurs of the artist’s work know that he painted not only marinas. Its winter landscapes deserve special attention.

The painting “Winter Landscape” was painted in 1876. Judging by the fact that the road is not yet covered with snow, the author probably depicted the beginning of winter. Careful selection of colors makes it clear that the trees are covered with frost and ice crust.

To convey the “harsh breath” of winter, the artist used blue, gray, pink, and sky blue shades. When looking at some paintings, it seems that the wind is about to blow, or the noise of the trees is heard.

Throughout his life, Aivazovsky painted about 6 thousand paintings. During the artist’s lifetime, 120 of his personal exhibitions took place.

Ivan Aivazovsky was lucky enough to become a recognized and sought-after artist. However, despite everyone's surrounding adoration,