Poster from Aivazovsky's painting St. Isaac's Cathedral in winter. art history

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

Winter landscapes by Aivazovsky

Winter landscape. 1876

Canvases on this subject are a real rarity, it is not easy to collect them even in electronic form. Looking at any winter landscape of Aivazovsky, it is hard not to agree that a real master had a hand in the canvas. The works are a real embodiment of the beauty of natural phenomena.

Do not think if we are talking about winter, then it should have one white color. In the winter picture, Aivazovsky uses shades of white, blue, pink, gray, black. Their skillful combination makes it possible to convey the "deafening" silence, the charm of a natural phenomenon. The canvas is filled with life, looking at it, a feeling of a breath of wind on the skin is created.

Not without human figures in the picture. The artist does not describe them in detail, it is clear from the outline that they are a man and a woman. There are other people in the background. Someone is in a hurry on business, and someone went 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 whole picture is illuminated by light emanating from snow-covered treetops. Above all this beauty rises the silent sky. The artist tried to convey to us all his feelings arising from admiring the natural beauty.

Where is Aivazovsky's winter landscape kept?

In our time, interest in the work of a Russian artist with Armenian roots does not subside. Until now, his paintings are 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 canvases of the marine painter are in the best museums of the world, they are also in Russian museums, but not the most outstanding ones.

The largest collections are presented in such places as:

• Feodosia art gallery;
• Tretyakovskaya;
• State Russian Museum;
• Museum-reserve Peterhof.

No one remains indifferent after seeing 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 policy of that time was 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.

Overnight 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 famous artist 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, Father Ivan's affairs went very badly, he went bankrupt. Aivazovsky Jr. has been fond of drawing since childhood, how his drawings caught the eye of a local architect is hushed up, 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 gymnasium of Simferopol, he was accepted into the Imperial Academy of Painting. In 1835, young Hovhannes received his first painting awards, two silver medals. Appreciating the young man's talent, he was identified as a student of the then fashionable French landscape painter. 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.

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

Even more entertaining 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 settlers in Feodosia. Of course, parents could not afford to hire a teacher. But this was not necessary. Hovhannes was taught to play by itinerant musicians at the Feodosia bazaar. His hearing was excellent. Aivazovsky could pick up any tune, any melody by ear.

The beginning artist brought the violin with him to St. Petersburg. Played for the soul. Often at a party, when Hovhannes made useful contacts and began to visit the world, he was asked to play the violin. Possessing a complaisant character, Aivazovsky never refused to play. In the biography of the composer Mikhail Glinka, written by Vsevolod Uspensky, there is the following fragment: “Once at the Dollmaker’s, Glinka met with a student of the Academy of Arts, Aivazovsky. He skillfully sang a wild Crimean song, sitting on the floor like a Tatar, swaying and holding the violin to his chin. Glinka liked Aivazovsky's Tatar melodies very much, his imagination was attracted by the east from his youth ... Two tunes eventually entered the lezginka, and the third into the Ratmir scene in the third act of the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila.

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

An interesting question is why in the figure 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. So he could play and sing at the same time."

self-portrait
1874, 74×58 cm

And this self-portrait of Aivazovsky will be given just for comparison: unlike the not so widely known previous ones, the reader is probably familiar with it. But if at first Aivazovsky reminded us of Gogol, then on this one, with sleek sideburns - Pushkin. By the way, Natalya Nikolaevna, the poet's wife, had exactly this opinion. When Aivazovsky was introduced to the Pushkin couple at an exhibition at the Academy of Arts, Natalya Nikolaevna kindly remarked that the artist's appearance very much reminded her of the portraits of the young Alexander Sergeevich.



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

At the first (and if we discard the legends, then the only) meeting, Pushkin asked Aivazovsky two questions. The first one is more than predictable for a dating situation: where does the artist come from? But the second one is unexpected and even somewhat familiar. Pushkin asked Aivazovsky if he, a southern man, was freezing in Petersburg?

Pushkin would have known how right he turned out to be! All winters at the Academy of Arts, young Hovhannes was really terribly, just catastrophically cold.

There are drafts in the halls and classrooms, teachers wrap their backs in downy shawls. 16-year-old Hovhannes Aivazovsky, accepted into the class of Professor Maxim Vorobyov, has frisky fingers numb from the cold. He gets cold, wraps himself in a jacket that is not warm at all, stained with paint, 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, the tooth does not fall on the tooth, for some reason the ears are especially cold. When the cold does not let you sleep, student Aivazovsky recalls Feodosia and the warm sea.

Head physician Overlakh scribbles reports to Academy President Olenin about Hovhannes’ poor health: “Academician Aivazovsky, having been transferred to St. I was in the academic infirmary, suffering, as before, and now, with chest pain, dry cough, shortness of breath when climbing stairs and a strong heartbeat.

Isn't that why the "Crossing the Neva", a St. Petersburg landscape rare for Aivazovsky's work, looks like it's teeth cramping from an 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 reared up on the Neva. Through the cold hazy colors of the purple sky, the Admiralty Needle appears. It's cold for the tiny people in the wagon. Chilly, disturbing - but also fun. And it seems that there are so many new, unknown, interesting things - there, in front, behind a veil of frosty air.

artchive.ru

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Original entry and comments on

I.K. Aivazovsky. Winter landscape, 1876
The painting "Winter Landscape" was sold at the Russian auction 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 an Armenian market headman Konstantin (Gevorg) Ayvazyan. Thanks to the efforts of the Feodosia mayor A.I. Kaznacheev, a gifted young man in 1833 got into the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. 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 around different countries and sailing on the seas, participation in the landing operations of the Black Sea Fleet off the Caucasian coast, made Aivazovsky a high professional marine painter. He did not want to live in the capital city - he bought a piece of land in his beloved Feodosia and built a house with an art workshop there. According to the last will, Aivazovsky was buried in Feodosia, in the courtyard of the church of St. Sergius, where he was baptized and where he got married. The tombstone inscription - carved in ancient Armenian words of the historian of the 5th century Movses Khorenatsi - reads: "He was born a mortal, he left an immortal memory behind him."

Primarily, Ivan Aivazovsky remembered by posterity as an outstanding marine painter. Seascapes were excellent for him, despite the fact that the artist never painted them on the high seas. But besides the marinas, Ivan Konstantinovich's collection included paintings with "land" plots. Aivazovsky's winter landscapes, which fascinate from the first second, have become a real rarity.

For most people, the name of Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky is associated with paintings on the marine theme, but true connoisseurs of the artist's work know that he painted not only marinas. His 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 allows you to understand that the trees are covered with frost and ice crust.

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

Throughout his life, Aivazovsky painted about 6 thousand paintings. During the lifetime of the painter, 120 of his solo exhibitions took place.

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