Ivan Aivazovsky

Aivazovsky was a Russian painter of Armenian descent, born in the Black Sea port of Feodosia. He trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg and in his twenties was appointed painter to the Main Naval Staff.

He produced some six thousand works, most of them seascapes. He rarely painted outdoors, working instead from memory in the studio, convinced that a breaking wave or a flash of lightning could not be copied from life. His translucent water and glowing light made him one of the most popular marine painters of the nineteenth century.