FOCUS ON PHILATELY: Painting up a storm: Ivan Aivazovsky (08/06/00)

FOCUS ON PHILATELY

by Ingert Kuzych

Painting up a storm: Ivan Aivazovsky

No other artist before him had managed to capture with such brilliance, accuracy and apparent ease the most difficult of subjects for a painter - the changing moods of the sea. Although Ivan Aivazovsky did occasionally dabble in the more traditional art forms of landscapes and portraiture, the bulk of his output was seascapes. He was a master at realistically depicting water and the sea in its many forms: calm, choppy, stormy, at night, as rain, as foam on waves, windblown, etc.

About the artist

Ivan Aivazovsky was born on July 29, 1817, in Teodosiia (present-day Feodosiia), a town on the southeast coast of the Crimean peninsula. He was the son of Konstantin Aivazovsky, a minor official of Armenian background who had come to Crimea from Austrian Galicia and settled there at the beginning of the 19th century. It was here that Ivan developed his lifelong fondness for the Black Sea.

A plague had swept through Teodosiia in 1812, wrecking the family business. When Ivan was born five years later, the family had fallen on hard times. The lad grew up waiting tables in a coffee house. With a good ear for music, he learned the violin and to play the folk tunes of many of the nationalities represented in the cosmopolitan port town. However, it was in drawing that the young Aivazovsky excelled. Lacking artist's materials, he drew with charcoal on the whitewashed walls of Teodosiia. Eventually these drawings attracted the attention of the mayor, who helped the young man enter the Symferopol gymnazium and, in 1833, the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

Aivazovsky flourished at the academy and after four years received a gold medal, which gave him the privilege of prolonged study abroad at the expense of the academy. In view of Aivazovsky's considerable talent, the Academy Council made an unusual decision. He was to return to Crimea for two years of independent work sponsored by the academy. This would enable him to perfect his preferred genre of seascape painting before departing to foreign destinations.

The graduate threw himself into his new assignment with the capacity for work that was to be his hallmark throughout life. An entire succession of Crimean seascapes soon emerged.

While still at the academy, the impressionable student had been attracted by the romance and beauty of sailing ships and at the same time intrigued by what he learned of naval battles. In Crimea he took advantage of a number of opportunities, and in 1839 took part in Black Sea maneuvers on three different occasions.

In 1840 Aivazovsky at last set off on his scholarship journey. He went to Rome, where he worked industriously and exhibited regularly. He was soon gathering widespread acclaim. The St. Petersburg publication The Art Gazette published a lengthy article on his success in Italy. Following is an excerpt.

"Aivazovsky's pictures in Rome are judged the best in the exhibition. His 'Neopolitan Night,' 'The Storm' and 'Chaos' have caused such a sensation in this, the capital of fine arts, that the palaces of noblemen and society venues are all astir with talk of the landscape painter from southern Russia; the newspapers have sung his praises loudly and all agree that only Aivazovsky depicts light, air and water so truthfully and convincingly. Pope Gregory XVI has purchased his 'Chaos' and had it hung in the Vatican, where only the works of the world's greatest artists are considered worthy of a place. His 'Chaos' is generally held to be quite unlike anything seen before; it is said to be a miracle of artistry."

Leading artists did not fail to praise Aivazovsky, while others began to imitate his work. Marine painting had been virtually unknown in Italy, but soon seascapes became all the rage. In 1842 Aivazovsky exhibited some of his works in Paris and was awarded a gold medal by the Paris Academy. Triumph followed triumph as the young man continued to travel around western Europe: to Spain and Portugal, France, England, Holland, and Malta.

What brought about such extraordinary interest in his work by both seasoned connoisseurs and ordinary art-lovers alike? It was undoubtedly Aivazovsky's unusual fidelity to nature that entranced all who viewed his pictures. His ability to accurately convey the effect of water in motion or to portray watery reflections of sunlight or moonlight was unprecedented. Viewing some of his works you almost felt you would get your fingers wet if you touched the canvas.

Aivazovsky returned to the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1844 and was honored with the title of academician. By decree of the tsar he was appointed to the Chief Naval staff "with the title of painter to the Staff and with the right to wear the uniform of the naval ministry." His first commission was to paint various sites on the Baltic Coast, an assignment he completed by the end of winter.

In the spring of 1845 the artist set out on a voyage around the shores of Asia Minor and the Greek isles. Working diligently, he filled his sketchbooks with the new impressions he experienced. On his return he settled in his hometown of Teodosiia and set to work painting the coastal scenes and places he had visited. The pictures of this period, especially those of Constantinople and Odesa, are among his best.

Aivazovsky soon realized that he preferred to work in this provincial seaside town; the role of court painter did not especially appeal to him. Although he continued to occasionally travel, Teodosiia remained his real home and it is there he created his best canvases.

Over the next half century Aivazovsky's indefatigable energy allowed him to produce the staggering total of about 6,000 paintings. He exhibited his works in Odesa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Sevastopol and Kherson, as well as in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1857, Aivazovsky repeated his Paris success: his exhibition was awarded the Legion of Honor. A prize only rarely conferred on foreigners (Figure 1).

Although, as mentioned earlier, most of Aivazovsky's works depict the Black Sea or seascapes, he did frequently travel through Ukraine proper and he did produce a number of Ukrainian landscapes. Among these are: "Chumak Caravan" (1855); "Reed Bank on the Dnipro Near the Town of Oleshnia" (1858); "Ukrainian Landscape" (1866); "Mill on a Riverbank, Ukraine" (1880) and "Wedding in Ukraine" (1891).

In 1868 Aivazovsky traveled in the Caucasus and the following year he took a trip to Egypt. Invited to the opening celebrations of the Suez Canal, he became the first artist to paint this engineering marvel and the epoch-making event.

A few years later, in 1871, Aivazovsky built a Historical and Archeological Museum in Teodosiia. He had long been interested in archeology, as was only natural with his affinity for maritime history. Many years earlier, in 1853, he had even taken part in archeological excavations near Teodosiia and discovered a number of valuable articles now housed in the Hermitage. Over the next several years he made a number of trips to Italy, visiting among other places Nice, Florence and Genoa.

In 1880 Aivazovsky established the Teodosiia Picture Gallery, which also served as his studio. Today it bears his name and houses 130 canvases and 270 of his sketches (along with paintings by other marine artists from Crimea). It is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in the area. In addition to the gallery and the earlier-mentioned Historical Museum, Aivazovsky contributed to his hometown in other ways. He donated the funds to build a water main for Teodosiia and opened an art school in the town. Needless to say, these civic actions earned him the admiration and love of the townspeople.

It was in 1892, at the age of 75, that Aivazovsky made his longest trip - to the United States. In the eastern United States he visited Washington and Niagara Falls, which he, of course, painted. In 1894 he joined the Society of South Russian Artists. Founded in Odesa in 1890, this was an association of artists who lived in southern Ukraine.

Aivazovsky passed away on May 5, 1900, in Teodosiia, leaving unfinished a painting, "The Explosion of a Ship," he had begun that very day. It still rests on its easel in the Teodosiia Picture Gallery. A monument of Aivazovsky was erected in 1930; it stands before that same gallery. Today, two of the principal sites of Teodosiia are Aivazovsky's tomb near an ancient Armenian church and his splendid Picture Gallery.

Aivazovsky stamps

The Soviet Union produced the greatest number of postal issues honoring Ivan Aivazovsky: a total of 10 stamps and one souvenir sheet. The first commemoration was a three-stamp set issued in 1950, the 50th anniversary of the artist's death. The first two stamps of this set depict two of Aivazovsky's most famous paintings.

The 40-kopek value shows "The Black Sea" (1881), which very realistically portrays a storm brewing over the sea. The wind forms swells in the water, while on the horizon a speck of a ship attempts to outrace the dark, threatening clouds (Figure 2). This masterpiece presently hangs in the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow.

The other work, "The Ninth Wave" (1850), appears on the 50-kopek stamp (Figure 3). Now in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, this haunting depiction is of a maddened, stormy sea at sunrise. Along the bottom of the canvas, a half dozen shipwrecked survivors cling to some flotsam. The newly risen sun, piercing the watery chaos, raises their hopes, while a looming, enormous wave portends their possible doom. Unfortunately, Soviet printing technology of the time does not do justice to the grandeur of this painting, Not only is it hard to make out any details, but the colors are distorted. The third (1 rubel) stamp of the set shows the artist as a young man - titled "I. Aivazovsky Portrait" (1841), it was painted by the Russian artist Aleksei Tyranov and may be found in the Tretiakov Gallery.

A single stamp greeted the 150th anniversary of Aivazovsky's birth in 1967. This time an early painting from 1840 was reproduced. Titled "Seashore," this 4-kopek value was part of a multi-stamp set displaying works from the Tretiakov Gallery (Figure 4).

In 1974 a decision was made to honor Aivazovsky with an entire stamp set of his own. Seven different values were included: six stamps, each featuring one of his greatest works, and a souvenir sheet depicting the artist. It turned out to be a lovely philatelic issue with fairly accurate and detailed reproductions of the paintings. The low-value, 2-kopek stamp presents a painting titled "View of Odesa by Moonlight" from 1846 (Figure 5). It currently hangs in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

The 4-kopek stamp is the only one of this series in a vertical format; it depicts "The Battle of Chesme on 25-26 June 1770" (Figure 6). Dating from 1848, the scene shows a spectacular nighttime sea battle. The painting is housed in the Dzerzhinsky Higher Naval Engineering College of St. Petersburg. The rendering on the 6-kopek features yet another night scene (Figure 7); its title is "St. George's Monastery" (1846) and it may be found in the Teodosiia Picture Gallery.

The next three, higher-value issues all depict turbulent seascapes. The 10-kopek stamp (Figure 8) is simply called "Stormy Sea" (1868) and is displayed in the Tretiakov Gallery.

The subject matter of the 12-kopek value (Figure 9), titled "The Rainbow," is somewhat reminiscent of "The Ninth Wave." Once more tension and uncertainty are depicted around the survivors of a sea storm. The mother ship is foundering, but one lifeboat has been launched, another is loading. Although survival is still questionable, a rainbow and an ascending sea gull represent hope. This is one of Aivazovsky's "wettest" representations. The mist and rain almost look as it they are ready to drip off the canvas (Figure 10). Painted in 1873, it may be found in the Tretiakov Gallery.

The 16-kopek stamp unfolds another dramatic story (Figure 11). Titled "Shipwreck" (1876), it presents a lifeboat full of survivors caught in a tempestuous sea. The craft is being driven against huge boulders at the foot of a cliff. Above, several onlookers have spotted the boat, but they are powerless to help. This famous canvas hangs in the Teodosiia Picture Gallery.

Finally in this set, the high value 50-kopek souvenir sheet features "Portrait of I. Aivazovsky" (1881) by Ivan Kramskoi, from the Teodosiia Picture Gallery.

Additional stamps with Aivazovsky connections appear in the postal releases of five other countries. Armenia honored Aivazovsky in 1993 when it reproduced his painting "Noah's Descent from Mount. Ararat" on a souvenir sheet. The artist was identified as Hovhannes (Armenian for Ivan) Aivazovsky.

In 1988 Madagascar included "The Black Sea Squadron at Teodosiia" (1890) on a stamp. The original resides in the Teodosiia Picture Gallery.

An 1845 work by Aivazovsky titled "Seascape," which hangs in the Art Museum of Romania in Bucharest, graced a 1971 stamp released by Romania.

A recent Russian 1.5-ruble stamp (from 1998) depicted "The Ninth Wave" (1850) previously described.

Finally, a Ukrainian 40-kopiyka stamp from 1999 (Figure 12), which commemorated the 200th anniversary of Alexander Pushkin's birth, indirectly also honored Aivazovsky. The scene is from one of his paintings, originally titled "Pushkin on the Shore of the Black Sea" (1897). The canvas was donated by the artist to the city of Odesa under a new name, "Pushkin in Odesa." The following year the rendering was hung in the Odesa Art Museum, where it may still be viewed.

Reconsidering Aivazovsky's Heritage

Ivan Aivazovsky belongs to a group of personalities on postal issues who were born and worked in Ukraine, but who have not generally been identified as being Ukrainian. Some other such notables are: Ilia Repin and Arkhyp Kuindzhi, artists; Ihor Sikorsky, aviation engineer; and Ilia Mechnykov, Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist.

In Soviet times Aivazovsky was always represented as a Russian painter, but he more correctly falls within the cultural milieu of both Russia and Ukraine. While much of his training and exhibiting occurred in Russia, most of his artistic labors were undertaken in present-day Ukraine, on the Crimean peninsula. A large segment of his output focused on Ukraine, Crimea and the Black Sea.

In my opinion, then, the above-described Aivazovsky stamps deserve to be included in any good philatelic collection of Ukrainian topics. This year marks the centennial of Aivazovsky's death. Would it not be appropriate if Ukraine Post prepared some sort of Aivazovsky philatelic commemorative release, perhaps featuring a marine topic?

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Want to find out more about Ukrainian philately? Why not attend the UKRAINPEX 2000 convention-exhibit October 7-8 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center, 26601 Ryan Road., Warren, MI. Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; there is no entrance fee. This is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the hobby, purchase unique items and examine rare materials. The Ukrainian Weekly's Dr. Ingert Kuzych will be in attendance.

Ingert Kuzych may be contacted at P.O. Box 3, Springfield VA, 22150 or by e-mail at ingertjk@gateway.net

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