ARTIST OF THE WEEK: Ivan Aivazovsky, 1817-1900
Survivors from a Shipwreck (1846), The Landing at Subashi (1839), Harbour at Odessa on the Black Sea (n.d.)
At this moment in time, I really should be doing my dissertation. But alas, Artist of the Week calls!
So this week, I’ve gone for one of my favourite seascape painters, the Russian Ivan Aivazovsky. Aivazovsky was born in Crimea to an Armenian family and studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art. His body of work is exceptional, and constitutes around 6000 paintings, and he is credited with being one of the most forged painters of all time. He frequently painted the waters of the Black Sea and would often spend hours outside observing, before returning to his studio to paint in the details of the scene.
J. M. W. Turner, n.d., A Windy Day
Alfred Sisley, 1885, Sailing Boats
Raoul Dufy, 1907, The Boats at Martigues
John Henry Twachtman, 1901, Fishing Boats at Gloucester
Christopher Nevinson, n.d, Venice from the Lido
Alfred Wallis, c.1932, Hold House Port Mear Square Island
Gustave Caillebotte, 1888, Voiliers a Argenteuil
Boats by Eugene Boudin, n.d
The Blue Ship by Alfred Wallis, c.1934. From the Tate:
Alfred Wallis spent most of his working life as a fisherman but by the time he was discovered in St Ives by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood in 1928 he had become a rag and bone merchant. He began painting at the age of seventy to keep himself company. Wallis painted memories of deep sea fishing boats which were no longer in use. He also painted landscapes based on the surrounding area. Nicholson and Wood were impressed by the directness of Wallis’s work, his use of irregular shaped pieces of cardboard as a support and ground, and the object-like quality of the paintings. The discovery of Wallis encouraged them to pursue further their adoption of a ‘naive’ vision.
Dead Calm, Sunset at the Bight of Exmouth by James Francis Danby, n.d
The Maas at Dordrecht by Aelbert Cuyp, c.1660. Cuyp was a landscape painter in the Netherlands during its Golden Age of the seventeenth century.
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