Ivan Aivazovsky painted this large-scale work in 1887, during a sojourn in Nice in the south of France. Presented here for the first t.mes at auction, the painting—on an unlined canvas and in an exceptional state of preservation—exemplifies all the hallmarks that earned Aivazovsky acclaim during his lifet.mes and for which he is celebrated today. The composition records a variation of one of the artist’s most successful and sought-after motifs: a ship anchored offshore in calm waters.

This mature work by Aivazovsky is firmly rooted in the European Romantic tradition. Light, water, and atmosphere take centre stage. An expansive sky and towering clouds fill the upper two thirds of the canvas, while the waters of a serene sea occupy the lower part. An unseen sun, either rising or setting on the left, suffuses the sky with a soft, diffused light further enlivened with subtle touches of orange-pinks. The luminous atmosphere is mirrored on the surface of the tranquil water, barely disturbed by birds and vessels. Two years later, Aivazovsky painted a similar composition, only this t.mes completely devoid of human presence. Now at the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Clouds over a Calm Sea (fig. 1) shares several elements with the present work, notably the use of impasto in the clouds, which is remarkably well preserved here.

Fifty years before painting this canvas, in 1837, Aivazovsky was awarded the Imperial Academy’s Grand Gold Medal for three marine pictures, as well as a pension that would allow him to perfect his craft away from the capital. He worked for two summers in his native Crimea on the Black Sea and then in Europe, soon establishing himself as the leading seascape painter of his generation. Aivazovsky’s life spanned nearly the entirety of the 19th century, and he was in many ways a man of his t.mes . He travelled extensively in Europe, worked in Constantinople, visited Egypt for the opening of the Suez Canal, and later even made the journey across the Atlantic to America.

In March 1887, the year the present work was painted, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, President of the Imperial Academy of Arts, informed his brother Tsar Alexander III of the necessity of marking Aivazovsky’s fifty-year anniversary as an artist, ‘whose talent and hard work have been of great benefit to the arts, and who is held in high esteem not only within the family of Russian artists, but also abroad’.¹ The official celebration—unusually grand for an artist in Russia—took place at the Imperial Academy on 26 September 1887.

Working and exhibiting in various countries, Aivazovsky used different spellings for his name when signing pictures, depending on where they would be exhibited, or for which patron they were intended. According to the inscription on the reverse of the present canvas, Aivazovsky painted it in Nice. The use of the ‘i’ with diaeresis in both signatures further confirms that the work was painted in France, or for the French market. Little is known about Aivazovsky’s visit to France that year. The chronology of his work and life in the 2016 Tretyakov Gallery exhibition catalogue does not.mes ntion it, whereas Caffiero and Samarine mention only a solo exhibition in Paris that year.² In any case, there are other known pictures from 1887 that are signed in the same way, including the monumental canvas Shipwreck off the Black Sea Coast (fig. 2), last sold in these rooms in December 2020 for £2,314,000.

While in his studio, Aivazovsky drew inspiration from memory and simple sketches. He was not particularly concerned with topographical accuracy and he often used observations of light and weather in one location for pictures set in altogether different places. The Italian flag on the ship and the rugged coastline with snow-capped peaks, as well as the fact that it was painted in Nice, suggest that the scene is set on the French or Italian Riviera. The ship could just as easily be anchored off Crimea, where the artist had settled in the mid-1840s.

The present work is included in the numbered archive of the artist's work compiled by Gianni Caffiero and Ivan Samarine.

¹ Quoted in Ivan Aivazovskii. K 200-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, exh. cat., Moscow 2016, p. 334.

² G. Caffiero and I. Samarine, Neizvestnyi Aivazovskii: k 200-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, Moscow 2016, p. 395.