Ivan Aivazovsky and the Russian Painters of Water by Victoria Charles

Author:Victoria Charles [Charles, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783102969
Publisher: Parkstone International

The Golden Horn, Constantinople, Moonlight, 1860. Oil on canvas, 38.1 x 59 cm. Private collection.

Moonlight Bathing off Theodosia, c. 1860. Oil canvas, 61 x 107.5 cm. Private collection.

1837 is also the year that he painted The Frigate “Aurora”. He admired it from Kronstadt, a Russian town on the Baltic Sea. In this canvas he imagines the vessel on the waves. It is one of his first canvases: its composition is unusual. In fact, Aivazovsky would generally show the entirety of a scene but in this one, only a section of the frigate, the ship’s hold and the masts can be seen.

Furthermore, the majority of Aivazovsky’s works are composed of two thirds of sky and a third of sea, in The Frigate “Aurora”, the sea takes up half the space. His style of painting was not yet well defined at the time of this painting; the Russian Master has not yet found the style that we now instantly recognise as his.

On the left, the frigate, caught in the waves, has dropped its anchor. In the foreground, to the right, a lifeboat carrying four men is adrift. Between the two, at an angle (which reaches from the bottom left-hand corner into the top right-hand corner) in the middle of the canvas, is a beacon. How could Aivazovsky have better imagined the ending? Men on board the frigate are leaning towards the sea. One of them throws a rope towards the beacon. It almost looks like a safety scene. The sky is grey, the sea is agitated; it has lost its blue hue and turned brown, ochre. At the top on the right, in the sky, we remark upon a white mark, a slight lightening?

This canvas provides a positive message. A rope thrown into the sea, respite from the storm or even the end of it; the shipwrecked sailors have a high chance of getting out alive.

This same frigate consequently experienced new adventures – real this time –: an expedition to Kamtchatka, defending Petropavlovsk, the Crimean war, an expedition to the bay of Castries… The Aurora frigate returned to Kronstadt on 22 June 1857, thirty years after its depiction by Aivazovsky.

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