86 Facts About Ivan Aivazovsky

Ivan Aivazovsky then returned to Russia and was appointed the main painter of the Russian Navy.

Ivan Aivazovsky had close ties with the military and political elite of the Russian Empire and often attended military maneuvers.

Ivan Aivazovsky was sponsored by the state and was well-regarded during his lifetime.

The saying "worthy of Ivan Aivazovsky's brush", popularized by Anton Chekhov, was used in Russia for describing something lovely.

Ivan Aivazovsky remains highly popular in Russia in the 21st century.

One of the most prominent Russian artists of his time, Ivan Aivazovsky was popular outside the Russian Empire.

Ivan Aivazovsky held numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States.

Ivan Aivazovsky signed an 1844 letter with an Italianized rendition of his name: "Giovani Aivazovsky".

Ivan Aivazovsky's family had migrated to Europe from Western Armenia in the 18th century.

Ivan Aivazovsky was initially known as Gevorg Aivazian, but he changed his last name to Gaivazovsky by adding the Slavic suffix "-sky".

Ivan Aivazovsky's elder brother, Gabriel, was a prominent historian and an Armenian Apostolic archbishop.

The young Ivan Aivazovsky received parochial education at Feodosia's St Sargis Armenian Church.

Ivan Aivazovsky was taught drawing by Jacob Koch, a local architect.

Ivan Aivazovsky moved to Simferopol with Taurida Governor Alexander Kaznacheyev's family in 1830 and attended the city's Russian gymnasium.

In 1833, Ivan Aivazovsky arrived in the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Maxim Vorobiev's landscape class.

In September 1836, Ivan Aivazovsky met Russia's national poet Alexander Pushkin during the latter's visit to the Academy.

In 1837, Ivan Aivazovsky joined the battle-painting class of Alexander Sauerweid and participated in Baltic Fleet exercises in the Gulf of Finland.

Ivan Aivazovsky returned to Feodosia in 1838 and spent two years in his native Crimea.

In 1840, Ivan Aivazovsky was sent by the Imperial Academy of Arts to study in Europe.

Ivan Aivazovsky first traveled to Venice via Berlin and Vienna and visited San Lazzaro degli Armeni, where an important Armenian Catholic congregation was located and his brother Gabriel lived at the time.

Ivan Aivazovsky studied Armenian manuscripts and became familiar with Armenian art.

Ivan Aivazovsky remained in Naples and Rome between 1840 and 1842.

Ivan Aivazovsky was heavily influenced by Italian art and their museums became the "second academy" for him.

Ivan Aivazovsky then visited Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.

Ivan Aivazovsky then returned to Naples via Marseille and again visited Britain, Portugal, Spain, and Malta in 1843.

Ivan Aivazovsky returned to Russia via Paris and Amsterdam in 1844.

In 1845, Ivan Aivazovsky settled in his hometown of Feodosia, where he built a house and studio.

In 1845 and 1846, Ivan Aivazovsky attended the maneuvers of the Black Sea Fleet and the Baltic Fleet at Petergof, near the imperial palace.

In 1851, traveling with the Russian emperor Nicholas I, Ivan Aivazovsky sailed to Sevastopol to participate in military maneuvers.

Ivan Aivazovsky's work was exhibited in Sevastopol while it was under Ottoman siege.

Between 1856 and 1857, Ivan Aivazovsky worked in Paris and became the first Russian artist to receive the Legion of Honour.

In 1857, Ivan Aivazovsky visited Constantinople and was awarded the Order of the Medjidie.

Ivan Aivazovsky was awarded the Greek Order of the Redeemer in 1859 and the Russian Order of St Vladimir in 1865.

Ivan Aivazovsky opened an art studio in Feodosia in 1865 and was awarded a salary by the Imperial Academy of Arts the same year.

In 1868, Ivan Aivazovsky traveled in the Caucasus and visited the Russian part of Armenia for the first time.

Ivan Aivazovsky painted several mountainous landscapes and in 1869 held an exhibition in Tiflis.

In 1870, Ivan Aivazovsky was made an Actual Civil Councilor, the fourth highest civil rank in Russia.

Ivan Aivazovsky was elected an honorary member of Stuttgart's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1878.

Ivan Aivazovsky made a trip to the Netherlands and France, staying briefly in Frankfurt until 1879.

In 1880, Ivan Aivazovsky opened an art gallery in his Feodosia house; it became the third museum in the Russian Empire, after the Hermitage Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery.

Ivan Aivazovsky held an 1881 exhibition at London's Pall Mall, attended by English painter John Everett Millais and Edward VII, Prince of Wales.

Ivan Aivazovsky's second wife, Anna Burnazian, was a young Armenian widow 40 years his junior.

Ivan Aivazovsky said that by marrying her in 1882, he "became closer to [his] nation", referring to the Armenian people.

In 1882, Ivan Aivazovsky visited Moscow and St Petersburg and then toured the countryside of Russia by traveling along the Volga River in 1884.

In 1887, as part of a jubilee celebration of his career, Ivan Aivazovsky hosted a dinner for 150 friends.

Each guest received a miniature painting by Ivan Aivazovsky set into a studio photograph of the artist at work.

Ivan Aivazovsky himself is a hale and hearty old man of about seventy-five, looking like an insignificant Armenian and a bishop; he is full of a sense of his own importance, has soft hands and shakes your hand like a general.

In 1896, at 79, Ivan Aivazovsky was promoted to the rank of full privy councillor.

Ivan Aivazovsky was deeply affected by the Hamidian massacres that took place in the Armenian-inhabited areas of the Ottoman Empire between 1894 and 1896.

Ivan Aivazovsky painted a number of works on the subject such as The Expulsion of the Turkish Ship, and The Armenian Massacres at Trebizond.

Ivan Aivazovsky died on 19 April 1900 in Feodosia.

Ivan Aivazovsky died on 25 July 1944 and was buried next to Aivazovsky.

Ivan Aivazovsky rarely drew dry-landscapes and created only a handful of portraits.

Ivan Aivazovsky was able to reproduce what he had seen only for a very short time, without even drawing preliminary sketches.

Ivan Aivazovsky held 55 solo exhibitions over the course of his career.

Vladimir Stasov only accepted his early works, while Alexandre Benois wrote in his The History of Russian Painting in the 19th Century that despite being Vorobiev's student, Ivan Aivazovsky stood apart from the general development of the Russian landscape school.

Ararat has been depicted in paintings of many non-native artists, Ivan Aivazovsky became the first Armenian artist to illustrate the two-peaked biblical mountain.

Ivan Aivazovsky resumed the creation of Armenian-related paintings in the 1880s: Valley of Mount Ararat, Ararat, Descent of Noah from Ararat.

Ivan Aivazovsky employed farmers to conduct archaeological excavations in the Feodosia area.

Ivan Aivazovsky was a major landowner with numerous estates in eastern Crimea, mostly in the vicinity of Feodosia.

The site contained several natural springs, which Ivan Aivazovsky acquired in 1852 from the Lansky family.

Ivan Aivazovsky had small estates in Romash-Eli, with 338 diasiatins of land covered with orchards, and the Sudak Valley, with 12 diasiatins of vineyard, along with a dacha.

Ivan Aivazovsky owned houses elsewhere in Crimea, such as Stary Krym and Yalta.

Ivan Aivazovsky was the most influential seascape painter in nineteenth-century Russian art.

Ivan Aivazovsky influenced Russian painters Lev Lagorio, Mikhail Latri, and Aleksey Ganzen.

Ivan Aivazovsky was one of the few Russian artists to achieve wide recognition during his lifetime, and gain recognition outside Russia.

In 1898, Munsey's Magazine wrote that Ivan Aivazovsky is "better known to the world at large than any other artist of his nationality, with the exception of the sensational Verestchagin".

However, Ivan Aivazovsky has not been incorporated into the mainstream Western history of art, and he remains relatively unknown in the West.

Ivan Aivazovsky was praised by contemporary artists Ivan Kramskoi, Alexandre Benois, and the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The phrase "worthy of Ivan Aivazovsky's brush" was the standard way of describing something ineffably lovely.

Ivan Aivazovsky has been described as the "most remarkable" Armenian painter of the 19th century and the first-ever Armenian marine painter.

Ivan Aivazovsky signed some of his paintings and letters in Armenian.

Ivan Aivazovsky was born outside Armenia, and like his contemporary Armenian painters, Aivazovsky drew primary influences from European and Russian schools of art.

The National Gallery of Armenia in Yerevan holds around 100 works of Ivan Aivazovsky, including 65 paintings.

Ivan Aivazovsky is depicted on the 20,000 Armenian dram banknotes issued in 2018.

Ivan Aivazovsky painted numerous Ukrainian landscapes, including of the Dnieper, the Ukrainian steppe, Odesa.

Paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky were taken from Kherson before Russian forces were forced out of the city in late 2022.

In June 2017 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claimed that Ivan Aivazovsky is "part of Ukrainian heritage", which prompted Russian media to accuse him of cultural appropriation.

Armenian traditions reigned in the house, in everyday life, but for everyone Ivan Aivazovsky is a representative of the large Russian world.

Ivan Aivazovsky was very patriotic, in his paintings he sang all the outstanding victories of the Russian navy.

The minor planet 3787 Aivazovskij, named after Ivan Aivazovsky, was discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh in 1977.

In 2016 and 2017 the 200th anniversary of Ivan Aivazovsky was celebrated with major exhibitions in Russia, Ukraine, and Armenia.

An exhibition featuring 120 paintings and 55 etchings of Ivan Aivazovsky was held at the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val in Moscow from 29 July to 20 November 2016 dedicated to his 200th anniversary of birth.

Ivan Aivazovsky's paintings began appearing in auctions in the early 2000s.

In January 2011 a number of paintings, including those of Ivan Aivazovsky, were stolen from the country house of Aleksandr Tarantsev, an owner of a chain of jewelry stores in Russia, outside Moscow.

In February 2011 an 1875 Ivan Aivazovsky painting A Storm on Rocky Shores was discovered at a Moscow auction after having been stolen from Armenia in 1990.