Aivan Aivazovsky
Aivazovsky was born in the town of Feodosiya (Theodosia), Crimea
(Russian Empire) to a poor Armenian family. His brother was the Armenian
Archbishop Gabriel Aivazovsky. His family moved to the Crimea from
Galicia (then in southern Poland, now in Ukraine) in 1812. His talent as
an artist earned him sponsorship and entry to the Simferopol gymnasium
№1 and later the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts, which he graduated with a
gold medal. Earning awards for his early landscapes and seascapes, he
went on to paint a series of portraits of Crimean coastal towns before
travelling throughout Europe. In later life, his paintings of naval
scenes earned him a long-standing commission from the Russian Navy
stationed in the Black Sea.
In 1845, Aivazovsky went to İstanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845–1890. His works are found in dozens of museums throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the Aivazovsky Art Gallery in Feodosiya, Ukraine. The office of Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has Aivasovsky's paintings on the wall.
In 1845, Aivazovsky went to İstanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845–1890. His works are found in dozens of museums throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the Aivazovsky Art Gallery in Feodosiya, Ukraine. The office of Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has Aivasovsky's paintings on the wall.
Aivazovsky was deeply affected by the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor in 1895, painting a number of works on the subject such as "The Expulsion of the Turkish Ship," and "The Armenian Massacres at Trevizond." and renouncing a medal which had been awarded to him in İstanbul. He spent his last years in Feodosia where he supplied the town with water from his own estate, opened an art school, began the first archaeological excavations in the region and built a historical museum. Aivasovsky died in Feodosiya in 1900.
Recently I’ve read an interesting fact about Ivan Aivazovsky.
ReplyDeleteWhen he celebrated his fiftieth anniversary, he’d invited many famous people for dinner. By the end of it, he excused that his cook hadn’t prepared a dessert, but he’d made his own desert for them. During those words, servants was distributing the small landscapes for his guests.
He made his pictures from his mind
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