Happy New Year to all our readers!
To everyone, everyone, everyone - lots and lots of joyful, good, kind, beautiful things!
Let's stay focused on aesthetics and positivity!
New Year's surprise:
Winter landscapes by marine painter I.K. Aivazovsky
I.K. Aivazovsky. Winter landscape, 1876
Mill, 1874
Winter landscape, 1874
Winter landscape
St. Isaac's Cathedral on a frosty day
Winter train on the way, 1857
Winter scene in Little Russia
Winter view
Small curriculum vitae: Ivan Konstantinovich Ayvazyan was born on July 29, 1817 in Feodosia in the family of the market head of the Armenian 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 landscape painting St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Travel around different countries and sailing the seas, participating in landing operations 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.”
1. Self-portrait at a desk.
2. Self-portrait with a violin.
These are graphic self-portraits of Aivazovsky. Perhaps he is unrecognizable here. And more like not your own scenic images(see below), and to 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 Armenian settlers 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 better life. In St. Petersburg, seeing my first future wife Julia Grevs 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 at first 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 portraits 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 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 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, 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.
artchive.ru
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Original post and comments at
First of all, Ivan Aivazovsky He was remembered by posterity as an outstanding marine painter. Seascapes they were given to him excellently, despite the fact that the artist had 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 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 color range 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 to become a recognized and sought-after artist. However, despite everyone's surrounding adoration,
I.K. Aivazovsky. Winter landscape, 1876
The painting "Winter Landscape" was sold at the Russian auction at Sotheby's.
Mill, 1874
Winter landscape, 1874
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 landscape. Private collection
Winter convoy on the way, 1857. Smolensk Art Gallery
Winter scene in Little Russia
Winter view
A short biographical note:
Ivan Konstantini 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.”
