The Black Sea by Ivan Aivazovsky was created in 1881. The painting is in Tretyakov State Gallery Moscow. The size of the work is 149 x 208 cm and is made as an oil on canvas.
Aivazovsky is the most famous and celebrated Russian marine painter. The sea appears in his paintings as something multifaceted. At times, it is an element which crushes men and does not obey any laws; at other times, it beckons with its expanse, a symbol of Romantic dream. The viewer beholds an endless marine space and the infinite heaven above it. In the foreground, there is a wave with whitecaps – the “Aivazovsky wave” as his contemporaries called it. The palette is unusually rich. It intensifies from greenish, silver, emerald tints and to the deep, nigrescent blueness at the horizon. In the centre, we can see a lone sailboat, a symbol of man’s insignificance in the face of the universe and, at the same time, a sign of Romantic Wanderlust… (read more in Tretyakov State Gallery)
About the Artist: Russian-Armenian Romantic painter Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky was born in Feodosia (1817). Aivazovsky’s childhood was spent in poverty on the outskirts of the city facing the beautiful Feodosia Bay and the ruins of an ancient Greek fortress. Young Ivan was mesmerized by the grandeur of the view and the heroic stories told about the Greeks and the famous battles of the past. His talent was discovered at a very early age. He was taken on as an apprentice by a local architect and later sent to a gymnasium in Simferopol where he showed such amazing artistic skills that influential locals helped him move to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Art… Read more
You can order this work as an art print on canvas from canvastar.com
