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This dissertation examines the relationship between the visual arts and the
imagination and construction of identities and spaces. It focuses on Ivan
Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) within a cross-cultural network of
meaning, in particular addressing the manifold functions of the visual arts in
nineteenth-century Russian society, while attending to a diverse range of voices
within, and beyond, Russian culture.
This study examines how art and material culture were used to construct
imperial, national, and social identities in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire and
its southern coasts, and how these ways of making sense of the world interacted.
Combining iconographic analysis of selected paintings, the context of nineteenthcentury
artistic milieus, and the biography of the artist, my research illuminates how
the art of Aivazovsky was used to mediate critical stages in the relations of the
nineteenth-century Black Sea world. It also shows how artistic and material contexts
clarified the emergence of specific possibilities of national identity and their extension
to the imperial.
Analyzing Aivazovsky’s oeuvre thematically, in Ottoman and Armenian as
well as Russian contexts, while retaining the artist’s intersecting identities (Russian,
Russian-Armenian, and Armenian), facilitates a more nuanced understanding of
nineteenth-century visual culture and cultural diplomacy involving Russia, the
Ottoman Empire, and Armenia. Thus, art is shown to have functioned simultaneously
as a process of building contextual cultural identifications and an instrument for crosscultural
and cross-imperial dialogue. Going beyond another round of national struggle
for cultural ownership, the thesis investigates the complexity of context, artist, and
oeuvre that emerged before the cultural hegemony of the nation. By contextualizing
iv
Aivazovsky as “in-between” and “across,” rather than as embedded in the nation (or
any given empire), this dissertation revises our understanding of his influence. A focus
is placed on the function of the artist in respect of the histories, cultures, and politics
of the peoples around the Black Sea and recalling of an older, more deeply rooted,
artistic and intellectual cultural mapping of this region.
By analyzing not only the ever-shifting state policies with respect to the Black
Sea region but also the varying aspects of the Black Sea topography (and specifically
the Crimean region) in the Russian imagination, I offer intriguing perspectives on the
shifting sense of “Russianness” itself as the nation looked to move form a land-based
(supposed backward) territorial empire to a maritime (forward-looking) imperial
power. Locating in his creative works the features of his “national” character as a
Russian imperial citizen, the expressions of the ancient culture of the Armenians, and
his passion for the natural beauty of the Black Sea, my new approach views
Aivazovsky as a painter, subject, and citizen operating simultaneously within, beyond,
and across imperial borders and national imaginaries.
Keywords: Aivazovsky, nineteenth-century Russian painting, seascape, the Black
Sea, identity, Armenian painting.
v
ÖZET
Bu çalışma görsel sanatlar ile kimlik ve mekân algısının tahayyülü ve inşası
arasındaki organik bağı kültürlerarası bir iletişim ağı içinde, Ivan Konstantinovich
Ayvazovski’ye (1817-1900) odaklanarak incelemektedir. Çalışmam on dokuzuncu
yüzyıl Rusya İmparatorluğu sınırlarına bakarak özellikle güney kıyılarında (Karadeniz
ve Kırım coğrafyası) emperyal, ulusal ve sosyal kimliklerin inşa sürecini ve bu süreçte
sanatın ve kültür politikalarının nasıl kullanıldığını; ne şekilde etkileşim içinde
olduklarını analiz etmektedir. Sanatçının seçilen resimlerinin ikonografik tahlilini, on
dokuzuncu yüzyılın sanatsal ortamının bağlamı kapsamında biyografisi ile birleştiren
araştırmalarım, her iki imparatorluğun ilişkilerinde kritik aşamalara aracılık etmek için
Ayvazovski’nin sanatının nasıl kullanıldığını aydınlatmayı hedeflemektedir. Aynı
zamanda, on dokuzuncu yüzyıl sanat dünyasının daha net bir biçimde anlaşılması, o
yüzyılın politik ortamının temelini oluşturan belirli ulusal kimliklerin nasıl ortaya
çıktığının kavranmasını da kolaylaştıracaktır.
Rus ve Osmanlı bağlamlarında Ayvazovski’nin kesişen kimliklerinin (Rus,
Rus-Ermeni ve Ermeni) etkisi altında çalışmalarını incelemek, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu,
Rusya ve Avrupa arasında on dokuzuncu yüzyıla ait bir görsel kültür ve kültür
diplomasisi anlayışını yaratmaktadır. Burada sanat, kültürel kimlikler oluşturma ve
kültürler arası diyalog için bir araç oluşturma süreci olarak da tanımlanabilir.
Ayvazovski böylece Rus, Ermeni ve Osmanlı/Türk sanat tarihinin en önemli
figürlerinden sadece biri değil, aynı zamanda bu ulusal geleneklerin kesiştiği bir anın
somut göstergesi konumuna gelmiştir.
Sadece on dokuzuncu yüzyıldan kalma Romantik Rus deniz manzarası ressamı
olarak tanımlamak yerine, Ayvazovski’yi stilistik ve kimlik oluşumu açısından çok
boyutlu bir mercekle incelemek bu çalışmanın amacını oluşturmaktadır.
vi
Ayvazovski’nin yaratıcılığını tam olarak anlamak için Ermeni ve Osmanlı sanatındaki
rolüne atıfta bulunmak çok önemlidir. Böylece, Rus kültürüne ait olmakla birlikte,
Ermeni ve (bir dereceye kadar) Osmanlı kültürüne de ait olduğu söylenebilir. Onu, bu
iki imparatorluğun tam da kesişim noktasına yerleştirerek, Ayvazovski’yi Karadeniz
çevresindeki halkların tarihlerini, kültürlerini ve siyasetini bir araya getiren bir sanatçı
olarak ele alan bu çalışma, bölgenin daha eski bir sanatsal/entelektüel haritasını da
ortaya çıkartmayı hedeflemektedir. Bir Rus imparatorluk yurttaşı olarak ürettiği
eserler, Ermeni milli kültür bilincinin gelişimine katkıları aynı zamanda İstanbul’un
pitoresk görüntüsüne karşı tutkusu onu bu üç kültür içerisinde paralel bir anlayışla ele
almamıza yardımcı olur. Bu çalışma, çok uluslu bir karaktere sahip ressam ve vatandaş
olarak Ayvazovski’ye odaklanarak ulusal sınırların ötesinde daha geniş bir coğrafya
olarak tanımlayabileceğimiz “Karadeniz” bağlamıyla kesişecek ve birleşecektir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Aivazovsky, on dokuzuncu yüzyıl Rus resim sanatı, manzara
resmi, Karadeniz, kimlik, Ermeni resim sanatı.
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Over the years that it has taken to bring this dissertation into being, I have
accumulated many debts for which I am grateful. First and foremost, I am grateful to
Professor Günsel Renda and Professor Ahmet Ersoy, who advised the dissertation.
They have been constant sources of intellectual inspiration and professional guidance.
They guided the project from the beginning and have never since failed to lend their
generous support and advice the countless times it was requested. I am also grateful to
Professor Tarık C. Amar, who has been unwavering in his thoughtful and encouraging
reception of my work. I am also thankful to Professor Catherine Evtuhov, who
encouraged this project from the start while I was taking her seminar on Russian
intellectual history, which guided me to Aivazovsky and Black Sea networking. I
would also like to thank Zeynep İnankur, Yonca Köksal, Filiz Yenişehirlioğlu, and
Deniz Türker, other professors of mine who were on the committee. Their contributions
helped to bring this thesis into the light of day. I am also thankful to Professor Nina
Macaraig, who has been supportive of this dissertation from the beginning.
Koç University has been a nurturing and stimulating academic home, and I
would like to express my most sincere gratitude to everyone in the Archaeology and
Art History Department and the Institute of Social Sciences for their encouragement
and their friendship. I would like to thank the former head of the Institute, Professor
Zeynep Aycan, for her dedication to her students. She has served as my model for what
it means to be a mentor and a colleague. For their kindness and generous support, I am
also thankful to the coordinators of the Social Sciences Institute, Tuğçe Şatana, Gülçin
Erdiş, Türkan İnci Dursundağ, and the former coordinator Zeynep Cengiz.
My dissertation has been enriched by conversations with countless individuals.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Kutluğhan Soyubol for his friendship,
viii
invaluable feedback, and excitement in the early stages of my project. I am indebted to
Professor Mary Roberts for sharing her ideas with me, allowing me to focus on
nineteenth-century painting from a different, comparative perspective. I am grateful to
Vazken Davidian for sharing, without hesitation, parts of his dissertation and article
with me before publishing. I would also like to thank Ivan Samarine for sharing his
knowledge of Aivazovsky and giving supportive feedback.
Throughout the process of this dissertation, I have been blessed to have friends
who both supported me and added much-needed balance to my life. It is with pleasure
that I thank just a few: Sabiha Göloğlu, Bengi Atun, Hazal Yıldırımer, and Gizem
Tongo for their readiness to advise, support, and entertain and for their
kindheartedness.
While at Koç University, my research abroad and writing was also supported
by The American Research Institute’s Hanfmann and Mellink Fellowship and by the
French Embassy’s Research Fellowship. These generous fellowship programs made
possible extended trips through Russia, Crimea, France, and the United Kingdom
during my research. I am grateful to Bahar Yolaç Pollock and Anjelika Akbar, who
provided precious networking with the critical museums in the Russian and Crimean
regions. I wish to express my special thanks to Sergei Levandowski, who provided me
all the sources related to Aivazovsky in the Russian State Museum and who visited the
hall of the artist in the museum with me, displaying great kindness and sharing his
knowledge with me. I am also grateful to Tatiana Gaiduk for her great hospitality
during my research in Feodosia and the Aivazovsky Gallery in particular. She made
real my dream to visit the whole Crimean region and all the Aivazovsky-related
museums. In Russia and Crimea, I am grateful to the staff of the following institutions
for facilitating my research: the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Peterhof State
ix
Museum (St. Petersburg), Tsarskoye Selo State Museum (St. Petersburg), the Imperial
Academy of Arts (St. Petersburg), the National Library of Russia (St. Petersburg), the
Central Naval Museum (St. Petersburg), the Russian State Naval Archive (St.
Petersburg), the Russian State Historic Archive (St. Petersburg), the Russian State
Archive of Art and Literature (Moscow), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the
State Tretyakov Gallery Manuscript Department (Moscow), the Russian State Library
(Moscow), and the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery (Feodosia) for their assistance
with primary and secondary sources and their hospitality during my research. In Paris
and London, I would also like to acknowledge Boris Adjemian and Megerditch Basma
for facilitating my research in the Nubarian Library. Additionally, the staff of the
National Library of France, Louvre Museum (Paris), the British Library (London), and
the Victoria and Albert Museum National Art Library (London) were generous with
their time. Also, I would like to thank Tim Stanley from the Victoria and Albert
Museum for his gracious help with the Museum’s archives.
During my internship at the National Museum of Warsaw, I especially
benefited from the knowledgeable and considerate help of Professor Tadeusz Majda. I
thank him especially as well as the staff of the National Museum of Warsaw, the
Krakow National Museum and the Jagiellonian Library who were outstanding and
generous in sharing their experience with me.
I would like to thank here Jay Lewis Allchin for his great help with the English
editing, Kseniya Venediktova with the Russian archival research and the text materials,
and Vağarşag Seropyan for the Armenian translations. Moreover, I would like to thank
the people working in the Ottoman Archives, Boğaziçi University Library, and Koç
University Library for the ease and help they graciously provided me. I am grateful to
His Excellency Levon Zekiyan, who agreed to meet me and shared his great knowledge
x
of Aivazovsky’s connection with St. Lazarus Island. Also, I have enjoyed the
thoughtful and generous support of Gülsen Sevinç Kaya during my countless visits to
the Dolmabahçe Painting Museum and staying longer hours in the Aivazovsky Hall.
The foundation of this dissertation is my family. There is little I can say to
properly thank my mother Zübeyde Görken, my stepfather Yaman Görken, my sisters,
Güneş El Kara, Naz Görken, and my brother Fethi Burak Özyiğit for their
unconditional love and support. I would also like to extend heartfelt thanks to my
cherished extended family: my mother-in-law Zehra Coşkuner and my father-in-law
Ümit Coşkuner and his luminous trust and support me to complete the doctorate. Last
but not least, I would like to thank my little son, my muse, Ümit Cem Coşkuner, for
being part of my life. I am grateful to my son for connecting me to life whenever I was
down with his beautiful smile and energy. And I am grateful to my dearest husband
Kerem Coşkuner, who has experienced all the important moments in the long and
difficult process of writing this dissertation. He has suffered the lows and enjoyed the
highs, and he is my cause for celebration at the end of the day. Without these two men
in my life, none of this would have been possible. And so, I dedicate this work to them.
xi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT iii
ÖZET v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................... vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ xi
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................... xiv
NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION ................................. xviii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................... xix
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1
An Empire of the Land/Seascape ............................................................................ 11
Sources and Structure .............................................................................................. 13
CHAPTER 1 Imagining the Black Sea: Representation of the Russian Imperial
“Paradise” ...................................................................................... 24
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 24
Painting the Russian Picturesque: Aivazovsky in Crimea ...................................... 30
Authenticity versus Artificiality .............................................................................. 42
The Historicizing Visual Order of the Russian Navy in the Art of Aivazovsky’s
Commissions ........................................................................................................ 44
Crimea Revisited: Seascapes of the Motherland ..................................................... 48
Catherine the Great and the Paradise Myth ............................................................. 52
Illustrating the Grandeur Realistically: The Black Sea ........................................... 56
Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 59
xii
CHAPTER 2 Historical Vision and the Representation of History in Aivazovsky’s
Battle Paintings .............................................................................. 62
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 62
The Russo-Ottoman War of 1768–1774 ................................................................. 68
The Battle of Chios and Chesme ............................................................................. 68
The Battle of Navarino and the Russo-Ottoman War of 1828–29 .......................... 73
“Azov” and “Mercury” as Representations of Russian Maritime Power ........... 73
The Crimean War of 1853–1856 ............................................................................. 77
Depicting the Sacred Martyrdom: Heroic Death and Allegory in Aivazovsky’s
The Malakhov Burial Mound ............................................................................... 85
The View from Sevastopol: The Two Depictions of the Squadron of the Black
Sea Fleet Entering the Sevastopol Roadstead ...................................................... 89
The Russo–Ottoman War of 1877–1878 ................................................................. 91
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 101
CHAPTER 3 God’s Storm: The Portrayals of Maritime Disasters and Shipwrecks
..................................................................................................... 104
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 104
The Heroic Ideal: Peter the Great as the Father of Modern Russia ...................... 107
Shipwrecks and Loss: The Disaster of Ingermanland ........................................... 112
Victory of Man, Humanity, and Life: The Ninth Wave, Rainbow and The Wave . 115
Creating the Sublime: Storm at Cape Aya and Shipwreck .................................... 120
The Biggest Shipwreck in History: Noah’s Ark ................................................... 123
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 127
CHAPTER 4 The View from Ararat: The Articulation of Aivazovsky’s Armenian
Identity ......................................................................................... 130
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 130
The Nationalization of Nature: Depictions of Mount Ararat ................................ 134
xiii
Framed by a Bible: Depictions of Ararat as a Holy Mountain, Descent of Noah
from Ararat ......................................................................................................... 141
Portrayal of an Atrocity: Aivazovsky’s Responses to the Ottoman-Armenian
Massacre of 1895–97 ......................................................................................... 143
The Last Stage of His Life: 1899 Baku Exhibition and Depiction of Lord Byron156
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 159
CONCLUSION 162
Aivazovsky: An Artistic Legacy ........................................................................... 168
A Final Word: The Crimean Legacy and Staging the Black Sea .......................... 172
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 174
FIGURES 193
xiv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonlight Night on the Crimea Gurzuf, 1839, ..... 193
Figure 2 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Yalta, 1838, ........................................................... 194
Figure 3 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Old Feodosia, 1839, ............................................. 195
Figure 4 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Landing at Subashi, 1839, ............................. 196
Figure 5 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sveaborg, 1844, .................................................... 197
Figure 6 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Reval from the 1843 Roadstead, 1844, ................. 198
Figure 7 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, View of Odessa on a Moonlit Night, 1846, ........... 199
Figure 8 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonlit Night on the Seashore, 1849, .................. 200
Figure 9 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sunset at the Crimean Shores, 1856, .................... 201
Figure 10 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, View in Oreanda, 1858, ...................................... 202
Figure 11 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonlit Night in the Crimea, 1859, .................... 203
Figure 12 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Arrival of Catherine II in Feodosia, 1883, .. 204
Figure 13 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Black Sea, 1881, .......................................... 205
Figure 14 – The Black Sea, view from the balcony of Aivazovsky’s estate, .......... 206
Figure 15 – The Chesme Hall at the Grand Palace in Petergof, St. Petersburg ....... 207
Figure 16 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Battle of Çeşme at Night, 1848, .......................... 208
Figure 17 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Naval Battle at Chios, 1848, ............................... 209
Figure 18 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Battle of Navarino on 8 October 1827, 1846,
.................................................................................................................................. 210
Figure 19 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Mercury Brig Meeting the Russian Squadron
After Her Victory over Two Turkish Vessels, 1848, ................................................. 211
Figure 20 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Brig Mercury Attacked by Two Turkish Ships,
1892, ......................................................................................................................... 212
Figure 21 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Battle of Sinop, 1853, .................................. 213
xv
Figure 22 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sinop. Night After the Battle on 18 November 1853,
1853, ......................................................................................................................... 214
Figure 23 – Top: Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s depictions of Osman Pasha and Adil Bey 215
Figure 24 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Siege of Sevastopol, 1854, .................................. 216
Figure 25 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Malakhov Burial Mound, 1893, ................... 217
Figure 26 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Russian Squadron on the Sevastopol Roadstead,
1846, ......................................................................................................................... 218
Figure 27 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Squadron of the Black Sea Fleet Entering the
Sevastopol Roadstead, 1895, .................................................................................... 219
Figure 28 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Battle Between Steamer Vesta and the Turkish
Battleship Feth-i Bülend on the Black Sea on 11 July 1877, 1895, ......................... 220
Figure 29 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Cutters of the Steamship Grand Duke Konstantin
Attacking the Turkish Battleship Asâr-ı Şevket on the Sukhumi Roadstead on 12 August
1877, 1877, ............................................................................................................... 221
Figure 30 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Alexander II Crossing the Danube, 1878, .......... 222
Figure 31 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Imperial Fleet in front of Çırağan Palace, 1875,223
Figure 32 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Ottoman Fleet, 1874, .......................................... 224
Figure 33 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Ottoman Fleet, 1875, .......................................... 225
Figure 34 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Peter the Great at Krasnaya Gorka Lighting a
Bonfire on the Shore to Signal His Ships in Distress, 1846, .................................... 226
Figure 35 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Battle of Reval, 1846, .................................. 227
Figure 36 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Shipwreck of the Ingermanland in the Skagerrak
on the Night of 31 August 1842, 1860s, ................................................................... 228
Figure 37 – Ilya E. Repin, Wide World, 1903, ......................................................... 229
Figure 38 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850, ....................................... 230
xvi
Figure 39 – Théodore Géricault, The Raft of Medusa, 1818 and 1819, ................... 231
Figure 40 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Rainbow, 1873, ................................................... 232
Figure 41 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Wave, 1889, ................................................. 233
Figure 42 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Storm at Cape Aya, 1875, ................................... 234
Figure 43 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Shipwreck, 1876, ................................................. 235
Figure 44 – Arnold Böcklin, Isle of Dead, 1880, ..................................................... 236
Figure 45 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Icebergs in the Atlantic, 1870, ............................ 237
Figure 46 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The World Flood, 1864, ...................................... 238
Figure 47 – Gustave Doré, The Deluge, ................................................................... 239
Figure 48 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Chaos: The Creation, 1841, ............................... 240
Figure 49 – Robert Ker Porter, View of the Fortress of Erivan and Ararat, 1821, . 241
Figure 50 – F. Parrot, View of Ararat and the Monastery of Echmiadzin, c. 1834, . 242
Figure 51 – H. F. B. Lynch, Ararat from the Lake Echmiadzin, c. 1901, ................ 243
Figure 52 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Araks River and Ararat, 1875, ............................ 244
Figure 53 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Mount Ararat, 1868, ........................................... 245
Figure 54 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Lake Sevan, 1869, ............................................... 246
Figure 55 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Mount Ararat, 1885, ........................................... 247
Figure 56 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Descent of Noah from Ararat, 1889, .................. 248
Figure 57 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Catholicos M. Khrimian in the Neighborhood of
Echmiadzin, 1895, .................................................................................................... 249
Figure 58 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Massacre of the Armenians in Trebizond 1895,
1897, ......................................................................................................................... 250
Figure 59 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Turks Load Armenians onto the Ship, 1897, ...... 251
Figure 60 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Turks Offload the Armenians into the Sea of
Marmara, 1897, ....................................................................................................... 252
xvii
Figure 61 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Noah’s Descent from Ararat, 1898, .................... 253
Figure 62 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Descent of Noah from Ararat after the Great Flood,
1892, ......................................................................................................................... 254
Figure 63 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Quiet Night: Armenians Thrown Overboard, 1897,
.................................................................................................................................. 255
Figure 64 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Night: The Tragedy at the Sea of Marmara, 1897,
.................................................................................................................................. 256
Figure 65 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Byron on the Island of San Lazzaro, 1899, ......... 257
Figure 66 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Niagara Falls, 1893, ........................................... 258
Figure 67 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonrise: The First Train in Feodosia, 1892, ... 259
Figure 68 – Railway in Feodosia, photography by the author ................................. 260
Figure 69 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Explosion of the Turkish Ship, 1892, ........... 261
Figure 70 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sappho, 1893, ..................................................... 262
Figure 71 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Flood in Sudak, 1897, ......................................... 263
Figure 72 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Explosion of a Ship [uncompleted], 1900, ... 264
Figure 73 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Atlantic Ocean, 1896, ......................................... 265
Figure 74 – Aivazovsky House and Painting Gallery, early 20th century, scenic
postcard, ................................................................................................................... 266
Figure 75 – Monument-Fountain, Feodosia, early 20th century, scenic postcard, ... 267
Figure 76 – The Aivazovsky Fountain, early 20th century, scenic postcard, ........... 268
Figure 77 – The grave of Aivazovsky, early 20th century, scenic postcard, ............ 269
Figure 78 – The Armenian Church of St. Sarkis and the grave of Aivazovsky, early
20th century, scenic postcard, ................................................................................... 270
Figure 79 – Panoramic view of Feodosia, early 20th century, scenic postcard, ....... 271
xviii
NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION
When translating from Russian to English, I have used the Library of Congress system
with occasional modifications. I use ‘y’ rather than ‘ii’ or ‘yi’ for the end of proper
names (Aivazovsky rather than Aivazovski, Dostoyevsky rather than Dostoyevskii). I
use established English variants of place names—such as Crimea, rather than Krym,
and Moscow rather than Moskva. The names of rulers are also given in their familiar
English form—hence Peter, Catherine, and Paul, rather than Petr, Ekaterina, and Pavel.
The dates of a ruler’s reign are given at his or her first mention, as are the birth and
death dates of key individuals. Finally, the names of some places vary in modern
Russian and Ukrainian. I here use the Russian forms as they were most common during
the period covered in this work. In parenthetical notations of Russian words or phrases,
and throughout the notes and bibliography, I have preferred to provide the notations in
the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. It is easier to find the original sources with this original
style of writing. However, for repeated footnotes, I indicate the sources in English
translations to make the repetition easier to follow; the first footnote gives the original
(Cyrillic) name and translation, and the footnotes thereafter use just the English.
Unless specifically noted, all translations are mine. When quoting existing translations,
I have made minor adjustments for clarity.
xix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
RGIA Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg
RGALI Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow
ORGTG Manuscript Department, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
RGAVMF Russian State Archives of the Navy, St. Petersburg
BOA Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archives, Istanbul
1
INTRODUCTION
While Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817–1900) is nowadays considered as
among the most esteemed Russian painters of his age, particularly of seascapes, his
unique “intersected” identity—a mix of Russian, Crimean, and Armenian heritage—
invites larger questions about his visual representations in relation to broader social,
cultural, imperial and national contexts. In 1881, the hall at Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow—regarded as the artistic pride of Russia—received Aivazovsky’s
monumental canvas Black Sea, celebrating the magnificence of the sea and its eternity.
Yet, this single example of the artist’s work represents but one of many instances of
the intersection, the duality, of art, and nation-building work produced by Aivazovsky
over the course of the long nineteenth century.
My own attempt to grapple with Aivazovsky began with a project I started in
2012, “The Intersection of Identities: The Russian Aivazovsky vs. Turkish
Aivazovsky,” in which I reached the conclusion that the issue at hand involved
recovering the complexity of a context, artist, and oeuvre that emerged before the
cultural hegemony of the nation. In this respect, my dissertation has analyzed the
relationship between the visual arts and the imagination and construction of identities
and spaces.
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky was and is an important artist whose
intersecting identities and contexts (Russian, Russian–Armenian, Armenian, and
Crimean/Black Sea) have traditionally been neglected. Here, through his body of work,
I have addressed the manifold social, cultural, and political functions of the visual arts
in nineteenth-century society from a cross-cultural perspective. My study has
recovered and highlighted the complexity of multiple intersecting contexts, a versatile
and highly successful artist, and an oeuvre more diverse than usually remembered at a
2
historical moment on the eve of, but also still before, the cultural hegemony of the
nation. Contextualizing Aivazovsky and his work as “in-between” and “across”—
rather than as already (or still) securely embedded within the nation (or empire)—helps
us revise our understanding not only of his oeuvre and influence but also of the Black
Sea region as the site of alternative and productive cultural mappings.1
While Aivazovsky’s work was diverse, he is particularly associated with his
seascape paintings. Modern seascapes emerged as a genre and then became an
important pictorial symbol in close conjunction with the construction and visualization
of national narratives. Through Aivazovsky’s work and a deep and original exploration
of his historical context, I explore the interaction of seascapes, geography, art (and its
social and commercial conditions), state policies, and individual as well as local
agencies in the shaping of identities in the Black Sea area.
I was interested in exploring the presence of Aivazovsky in the Black Sea
region, covering my study of his biography beyond the geographical borders of St.
Petersburg and Russian artistic circles. I wished to gain a better understanding of
Russia’s links with the lands of its southern frontier, the Crimean Peninsula, as well as
the Empire’s relationship with a nineteenth-century Armenian born Russian artists
from the Crimean region along an extended Black Sea borders. My study captures the
image of the Black Sea functioning both as a showcase of the Russian Empire,
1 In the decades following the fall of the Soviet Union, scholars have explored the Black Sea region in
several scholarly texts: Neal Ascherson, The Black Sea: The Birthplace of Civilization and Barbarism
(London: Vintage, 1996); Charles King, The Black Sea: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004); James Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Though: Geography Exploration and Fiction
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) and Andrew Robarts, Migration and Disease in the
Black Sea Region: Ottoman – Russian Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). Moreover, the Black Sea Research Project, the Columbia
University Black Sea Network, and the recently founded journal of Balkan and Black Sea Studies
attest to the increasing interest among scholars concerned in the Black Sea’s economic, cultural,
political, and social history. Regarding Aivazovsky and his work, however, none of the studies already
in existence capture – or attend to – the crucial relation between visual culture and multiple,
interacting identities. For more information see:
http://www.columbia.edu/~bag2132/blackseanet/people.html; https://blacksea.gr; and
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/balkar.
3
displaying its ambitions as a maritime power and as the projection of the selffashioning
of a highly successful nineteenth-century artist in a world of multiple—
national, imperial, local, professional, and religious—identities.
Resisting the simple cultural cartography of a borderline between East and
West, I think it would be useful to consider the Black Sea region as a whole, as an
extensive border zone with dynamic, complex cultural and historical meanings. From
a range of critical viewpoints, the term “border zone” implies the significance of the
specific region (the Black Sea) in cultural and social theory; no longer perceived as a
“peripheral other” in relation to those empires that were surrounded by the sea or
marginalized by human spatial relations, the Black Sea has been re-oriented as a “site
of history, geography and cultural activity.”2 I will seek to understand how the Black
Sea, one of the most significant veins connecting the Russian Empire to the
Mediterranean to the south and Europe to the west, influenced the political and social
life of the empire from the eighteenth century. I imagine the Black Sea as the archetype
of a vast land-based empire,3 with its coastlines (often depicted in Aivazovsky’s
works), in which I will examine the relationship of water to historical actors that
experienced it socially, politically, and culturally. The Black Sea had long been
personified as a door that opens to European Russia and warmer territories, and I shall
2 Charlotte Mathieson, “Introduction: The Literature, History and Culture of the Sea, 1600–Present,”
in Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600–Present, ed. Charlotte Mathieson (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 2. Recent studies have shown the human geographies of the watery world,
worked to visualize the sea as a social space and examined the historic seascape; while others have
tried to historicize the historical existence of the sea, retrieving lost and interconnect traces of the sea
via various cultural types. For more information, see: Mike Brown and Barbara Humberstone, eds.,
Seascapes: Shaped by the Sea (n.p.: Routledge, 2018); Jon Anderson and Kimberly Peters, eds., Water
Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean (London: Routledge, 2016); Philip E. Steinberg, The
Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Tricia Cusack, ed.,
Framing the Ocean, 1700 to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 2014); Jerry Harrell
Bentley, Renate Bridenthal and Kären Wigen, eds., Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures,
and Transoceanic Exchanges (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).
3 In 19th century Russia, expansion, then settlement in Siberia and the Caucasus were vital components
shaping Russian imperial identity and Russia’s dream as a continental Eurasian power. Accepting the
Black Sea as a frontier between the empires around it, my study is an attempt to explain the role of the
Black Sea in the vision of Russia as a Eurasian power.
4
show how its seascapes became a key element in a new national geography with
particular reference to seascapes by a celebrated artist such as Ivan Aivazovsky. It is
important to briefly consider the complex cultural context and cultural debates that
enabled the development of the Russian national identity in this period and encouraged
the creation of a “native” seascape.
It will be one among the arguments of this dissertation that the aesthetic
features of Aivazovsky’s paintings, which were both “emblem” and “expression,”
correspond not only to stylistic (aesthetic and visual) developments as these emerged
and unfolded but also to an altered appreciation of what maritime empire and nation
were and the potential functions of art in supplying its articulation of place of the
individual within these abstractions.4 Aivazovsky’s masterpieces, I shall argue,
address several second-order sign-systems by which the identity of the artist as a native
of the Black Sea/Crimea and Russia as a maritime nation was naturalized and
homogenized.5 Also, his Armenian roots and, through the shipwreck iconography, his
religious side will be discussed. The dissertation examines the seascape as a “distinct
genre,” doing so with particular reference to how seascapes have been represented and
“constructed” through the visual world of Aivazovsky.
Ivan Aivazovsky is one of the most influential painters in the history of Russian
art. He was also one of the nineteenth century’s greatest and most prolific marine
artists, and one for whom naval and maritime Crimea provided a rich source of
4 For the relationships between art, identity, maritime nation, and empire, see: Martin W. Lewis and
Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997); Geoff Quilley, Empire to Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of
Maritime Britain 1768–1829 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Tricia Cusack, ed., Art and
Identity at the Water’s Edge (London: Routledge, 2012); Tricia Cusack, Riverscapes and National
Identities (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2010); Cusack, ed., Framing the Ocean.
5 As Tricia Cusack shows through the “generalization” and “homogenization” of individual
perceptions, it is possible to create particular images of the national river (in Cusack’s case, the river).
So, the depictions of the watery geography attach the river/sea, etc. to a particular topography that
enhances a reflection for imagining the whole watery area and its national identity. Cusack,
Riverscapes, 13.
5
inspiration. He painted the water (both as a subject and object) more commonly than
any other subject: from his earliest paintings, through which his reputation was created,
to his later, controversial works, the water remained at the center of the artist’s vision,
and later, increasingly so in the empire’s, then the nation’s, cultural and political
agenda.
It is the exceptional diversity of the artist’s creative engagement with the sea
that provides the basis of this dissertation, placed within the wider social, political and
national context into which Aivazovsky was born, and to which he made such a
significant contribution—in other words, his self-understanding shaped by the space
in which he lived and painted, that is, a portrayal of Russia as a distinct “maritime
power in the Black Sea” during the nineteenth century. Over the course of a career that
spanned some seven decades, images of the sea produced by Aivazovsky extended and
surpassed inherited and current conventions to establish a new maritime aesthetic.6
One may also note that the sea as a site of pictorial possibilities for Aivazovsky was
also intrinsic to the very subject, characterized as it is by a constant flux of emotive
movement.
In Aivazovsky’s paintings, I will seek to analyze the character and cultural
significance of the visual representation of the sea (and, more broadly, nautical
geography) between circa 1830 and 1900, investigating how the discrete, but highly
6 For theoretical information about the landscape see: Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, eds., The
Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design, and Use of Past
Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision:
Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 1994); Martin Warnke, Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature (London: Reaktion
Books, 2013); for basic and “exhibitionary” information about the origin of the seascape painting and
specifically Dutch marine painting, see: George S. Keyes, Mirror of Empire: Dutch Marine Art of the
Seventeenth Century (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1990); David Cordingly, Painters of
the Sea: A Survey of Dutch and English Paintings from British Collections (London: Lund
Humphries, 1979); Norbert Wolf, The Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Painting (Munich: Prestel
Verlag, 2019).
6
significant, maritime content of Russian art could assume such a prominent place
during the nineteenth century. Indeed, the most prominent public and national spaces
tended to include marine and nautical references. It does appear that the sea occupied
an immensely significant position in nineteenth-century Russian culture, one that may
be assumed as characteristically recognizable and multi-layered, yet which also,
beyond that and more deeply, spoke of the collective cultural, as an evocation of the
very essence of the nation, its blessings and its dreams and its suffering and tragedies.
What was it about Russia itself that attracted the attention of so many of its painters to
water? I shall contend that it was the mutability of the sea, among other things, that
enabled a dynamism in its representations. Thus, the cultural conception of the
maritime image as related to empire and the national character was able to shift through
time (during the nineteenth century), and this was profoundly and acutely expressed
by Aivazovsky in ways that were pertinently informed by his multifaceted identities.
The country has the Pacific Ocean to the far east, while the Baltic Sea, with its
St. Petersburg gateway and Kronstadt maritime port, is to the west. To the south is the
warm Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, with its resorts and trading ports fed by the large,
wide waterway of the Volga River, which divides the country into the east and west
empires. The cold seas built mostly from the frozen Arctic Ocean are to the north,
beyond the great waste of the Siberian tundra. Russia’s south has a relatively calm
climate—as beautifully demonstrated in the paintings of Aivazovsky, who spent most
of his life in Crimea. Aivazovsky invested most in the imaginative potential of the
iconography of the sea, which he realized at the level of the highest forms of landscape
painting, his representation of the sublime sea introducing a maritime aesthetic that
transcended mundane depiction and the explanatory heritage.
7
My dissertation traces the role of the philosophical link between the seascape
and history in the oeuvre of Aivazovsky, covering the era from the 1830s to the 1900s.
Aivazovsky was well suited and well placed to discern a set of ideas about the
historical significance of the sea and seafaring at the heart of both national and imperial
conceptions. This study will demonstrate how the depictions of the seascape in
Aivazovsky’s works reflect the rich historical significance of the sea in Russian culture
in the nineteenth century.
I argue that the sea in Russian tradition serves a historiographical and literary
role as it draws on this contextual cultural significance: it functions as a way to explore
the course and essence of history and to define and challenge contemporary Russian
identity in the light of this historical exploration. The notion that natural scenery is, in
and of itself, an aesthetic artifact—a landscape rather than a piece of land—is primarily
a product of modernity. My concern is with the way in which representation of the sea
operated as a negotiation and reconciliation with the multiple, mutable, and often
contradictory significations of the maritime in nineteenth-century Russia, where the
nautical experience played a significant role in the expanding of identity of the nation
as empire.
I make two further main points. First, the identification of the nation with
progress and its representative control of the sea supported the naturalization of this
developing national and imperial identity. The essence of that which was Russian was
encapsulated in and expressed through the inimitable form of the sea, mediated
through the palpable expanse as fact. This discourse became particularly significant
during the 1790s, when loyalty was an acute issue and the subject of patriotism at its
most contentious. Second, the interweaving and cross-currents of politics here with
8
aesthetic sensibilities has implications for representations of the sea in visual art,
particularly given the contemporary trend in painting toward sublimity and naturalism.
Notwithstanding the wealth of literature on these subjects, more attention is
required on the relationship between identity at the level of nation (and empire) and
the naturalism and the sublime as a metaphysics (particularly in travel imagery). This
dissertation proposes that the naturalistic representation of the sea in nineteenth
century Russia both functioned as a way to negotiate problematic issues of subjectivity
and identity while also deflecting their more radical implications by enforcing a
naturalizing ideological identification (i.e., of the nation with the maritime).
Although the then-and-now gulf in our experience of the sea and travel is
enormous, we should nevertheless appreciate and acknowledge that some aspects of
the nineteenth-century maritime mythology remain.7 These have continued to affect
the formation of national identity and measurement methods in different respects. Yet,
the subject of the maritime has assumed a special place in the academic disciplines of
nineteenth-century Russian history and art history and also a subsidiary significance
in the dominant demands of a plethora of other, more or less closed related disciplines
7 The growth of nationalism during the nineteenth century requested depictions of national homelands,
landscapes and seascapes; this imagery merged as a separate genre in art history and proliferated with
both traditional heroes and novel artistic creations as mythical figures. The mythology of the sea was
an inspiration to stories such as Sadko in Russian and Sanasar in Armenian folk culture. The myths of
Sadko represented in both Ilya Repin’s impressive canvas and in the famous opera written by Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov. Both art works are named Sadko. Numerous stories, sagas and legends devoted to
the sea have been sung for many centuries, even though Armenia is a landlocked country. According
to the Armenian ancient epic story, Tsovinar, the mother of the Armenian nation and the goddess of
the waters, conceived her two sons Sanasar and Baghdasar from the waters. Sanasar was born for the
oceanographers, astronomers, and scientists and it was believed he held Noah’s Ark on his shoulders.
Several generations of heroes of city of Sassoon trace their ancestry back to Sanasar. Thus, prenational
mythological associations of maritime history contributed to its subsequent symbolic power.
This will also demonstrate how various cultural and religious beliefs have long been cited in nautical
geography and maritime history. For the Sanasar myth, see Razmik Davoyan, ed., Six Armenian Poets
(Todmorden: Arc Publications, 2013), 1; Shahen Khactrian, Aivazovsky: Well-Known and Unknown
(Samara: Agni Publishing House, 2000), 32.
9
(including but not limited to socio-economic history and political ideology, ethnicity
and sex-gender constructions, and class dialectics).
After theories of economics and class stimulated by the prominent influence of
Marxist theory, the field of art critique has generally been informed by psychoanalytic
and semiotic perspectives and then feminist and gender approaches. Meanwhile,
maritime history has slowly been (re)integrated into the longue-durée comprehension
of nineteenth-century Russia, with more complete recognition of its status as both an
imperial and as well as maritime nation. However, there has not been a parallel
initiative in the field of art history. This unfortunate lacuna remains unfilled, a gap in
the analysis of art history in relation to Russia, empire, and the sea. The lack of
attention may be compared to the identification of travel in eighteenth-century literary
studies as a structural matrix for any sort of human activity or experience.
In general, the role of visual imagery in shaping modern identities, especially
national identities, has received attention in the pertinent literature. Thus, recent
studies by scholars such as Denis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels, James S. Duncan, T. J.
W. Mitchell, Christopher Ely, Tricia Cusack, Geoff Quilley, Mark Bassin, Jane
Costlow, and Arja Rosenholm have contributed greatly to our understanding of the
political, social, cultural, and artistic history of the relationship between the
land/seascape, identity, empire, and nation.8
8 For a selected bibliography, see: Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998); Denis Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing,
Imagining and Representing the World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008); Denis Cosgrove, Geographical
Imagination and the Authority of Images (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006); Denis Cosgrove and Stephen
Daniels, The Iconography of Landscape; Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision; James S. Duncan, Nuala
C. Johnson and Richard H. Schein, eds., A Companion to Cultural Geography (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2008); T. J. W. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2009); Christopher David Ely, This Meager Nature: Landscape and National Identity
in Imperial Russia (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002); Tricia Cusack, ed., Art and
Identity; Tricia Cusack, ed., Framing the Ocean; Tricia Cusack, Riverscapes; Geoff Quilley, Empire
to Nation; Geoff Quilley, Art for the Nation: The Oil Paintings Collections of the National Maritime
Museum (London: National Maritime Museum, 2006); Mark Bassin, Visions of Empire: Nationalist
Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999); Mark Bassin, Space, Place a, and Power in Modern Russia:
10
In the case of the Russian Empire, one of the recognized “great powers” of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a site of important developments in cultural
history, the importance of seascapes has not yet been the subject of systematic analysis.
Yet, no less than elsewhere, the growth of national and imperial identities during the
nineteenth century created a demand for the representation of the homeland,
landscapes, and seascapes. From the late-eighteenth century, the sea developed into a
picturesque object: the seascape came to embody an evolving set of aesthetic ideals
that shaped its representation.9 In particular, my work reveals how Aivazovsky’s
extremely successful art functioned to construct imperial, national, and social identities
in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire, paying special attention to efforts by
political and cultural elites to re-imagine Russia as a maritime power.
For example, Christopher David Ely’s book This Meager Nature: Landscape
and National Identity in Imperial Russia analyzes landscape painting after the pattern
developed at the start of the century. 10 This involved first, the construction of such
works produced by a specific artist as a series of monographic vignettes exemplifying
what were adjudged to be the artist’s best or typical pieces. Then, these would be
placed within pre-classified schools that manifest seemingly objectively determined
Essays in the New Spatial History (n.p.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018); Mark Bassin,
Sergei Glebov and Marlene Laruelle, eds., Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and
Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); Jane T. Costlow
and Arja Rosenholm, eds., Meanings and Values of Water in Russian Culture (London: Routledge,
2018).
9 Extensive research has been conducted into seascape painting and famous artists. I would like to
mention here three artists that enabled the wealth of Aivazovsky’s creative output to be placed in
perspective. The British seascape painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) is among those seascape
painters granted a long period of creativity. He successfully brought the “art of the sea from the
margins to the very center of the British art world” (Christine Riding and Richard Jones, Turner and
the Sea. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013, 11). The French artist Philippe Tanneur (1795-1878) was
also an important figure in Aivazovsky’s career, one of Aivazovsky’s teachers at the St. Petersburg
Academy of Arts. Although their relationship was tense, Tanneur’s approach to seascape painting
enabled Aivazovsky to see the world in a new way. Finally, a conscious understanding of the effect
produced by the Prussian artist Jacob Philipp Hackert’s (1737-1807) famous cycle of paintings on the
Battle of Chesme presupposes a complex interaction of creative possibilities in art, something
Aivazovsky achieved through various means in the course of his creative life.
10 Ely, This Meager Nature.
11
elements. Such an approach usually lends itself to the general survey form, operating
on the assumption that the constancy of character and incommensurability of the land
has resulted in an essentially constant human and aesthetic response to it, transcending
differences of time and intent.
By contrast, my aim here is to analyze the discursive function of the
iconography of the sea in nineteenth-century Russia, when and where the shifts in
pictorial appearance and emphasis can be seen as responding and articulating a range
of cultural and ideological contexts in a way that ultimately went quite beyond the
concern for representational verisimilitude. The domain of the water, in a geographical
sense, might be a marginal or peripheral place, but in social and cultural terms it might
become a site of some importance and centrality, such as a fashionable place (for the
imperial family), a key port, or a strategic naval point. My intention is also to
demonstrate how the ownership and definition of the seashore can be both asserted for
dominant imperial/national or political interests and challenged by and among
different ethnic or social groups. The sea has, therefore, been imagined, embodied, and
appropriated in Aivazovsky’s seascapes thematically in various ways, and the
centrality of water for the formation of cultural and imperial/national identities is not
in doubt.
An Empire of the Land/Seascape
The tsarist empire encompassed a huge territorial extent that included within
its numerous smaller ethnic populations and a wide array of different terrains, from the
Scandinavian north to the temperate Crimea in the south, from the mountainous
Caucasus to the central Asian plains. There were many other geographical regions
within the vast extent of the empire as well, so to speak of any single landscape of the
entire Russian Empire is not possible. What boundaries, then, have been marked out
12
as the subject of this study? Apart from any consideration of the Crimean landscape
and national identity, the geography of Crimea contributed crucially to the history of
what would come to be generally understood as the Great Russian landscape. Images
and descriptions of the Crimean landscape were deeply involved in the imagination of
Russian national space, even if some observers today might feel that the Crimean
landscape was culturally appropriated by Great Russia to represent its native territory.
The fact remains that geographical Crimea helped shape the image of the Great
Russian landscape as it came into being in the nineteenth century.11
My answer to the complexities of these overlapping boundaries and indistinct
national entities is to rely on an interpretive pragmatism. It is a fact for the historian of
national identity formation that the definition of a nation is the antithesis of a fixed
category. Even individual identity is an open and evolving subject. As a kind of
collective imagining, national identities are always multiple and always open to
change. National identity should thus be understood as a modern organizing principle
of cultural self-definition. The conceptualization employed is not of a fixed notion that
can be specified in and of itself but rather a process, one that aims to narrow and shape
the thoughts and experiences of a number of individuals at the same time. Thus, the
relationship between a geographical territory and a national identity is again open to
change, as well.
11 Neal Ascherson describes Crimea “as a sort of theatre, an apron-stage, for events important to the
whole Black Sea region and its peoples.” Neal Ascherson, Black Sea, 10. Crimea occupies the
strategically important space between the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Black Sea
region since the Black Sea coast has served as a land and sea throughfare for many civilizations and
cultures, and in particular, Crimea has been crucial to the historical development of the entire area.
Historically, Crimea was the main interface of the Black Sea region, providing an important
connection to Europe and the Ottoman Empire. This has placed the region at the heart of any
understanding of interaction of Russian, Ottoman, and Crimean history. It is worth mentioning that the
political geography of Crimea facilitated various settlement waves throughout history, and thus multiethnicity
became one of the region’s key characteristics.
13
Historically, Russia has comprised a congeries of peoples and principalities
dating back to Kievan Rus. After the Muscovite consolidation and the establishment
of the empire, the Russian tsars continued to conquer and partially assimilate widely
different peoples across a huge and expanding territory.12 In this way, Great Russia
came to dominate a large amount of land and ultimately succeeded in asserting itself
as a true and essential land known as Russia. As a consequence of this domination, it
bears repeating that this study will be concerned primarily with the identity of Russia
as articulated by the Crimean/Russian/Armenian Aivazovsky and as pertaining to
Great Russian territory and the seascape. It must be kept in mind, however, that the
vagaries of Russian identity have always been fairly permeable and have not yet been
resolved entirely by Great Russians, Ukrainians, Siberians, and many others, to this
day. Geography and society conspired to produce terrain in Russia that differed
significantly from the ideal landscapes of Western Europe. Hilly vistas, temperate
vegetation, marine views, medieval ruins, spectacular mountains, boundaries, and
well-cultivated land—almost all the components of beautiful European scenery—were
absent from Russia’s landscape. However, Aivazovsky broke this. Throughout his
artistic creativity, he celebrated the virtues of the sea and drew attention to features of
Russian marine history and topography which had, he felt, given its people a special
relationship with the sea.
Sources and Structure
Recent studies on river- and seascapes have shown that rivers, seas, and
oceans—the waterworld, in general—are recognizable as a significant feature in the
12 Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and the Russians: A History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Pres, 2011), 1-26.
14
study of history, history of art, and history of civilizations. In her book Riverscapes
and National Identities (what the author calls as “riverscapes”), Tricia Cusack
elaborates how the images of selected rivers’ landscapes played an important role in
creating national identities. As she shows, many nineteenth- and twentieth-century
artists portrayed rivers and their cultural and natural landscapes as a demonstration of
their national identity. Claude Monet’s impressionistic portrayals of the Seine, Isaak
Levitan and Ilya Repin’s Volga depictions, or Thomas Cole’s Hudson scapes became
very symbolic; not only were they a representation of nationalistic ideas, they also
embodied nationalist ideas about a specific place and culture. When the ideas of
nationalism were taking root across Europe and the United States, as Cusack shows,
the riverscape became a potential actor in solidifying the abstract concept of
nationalism into a potent visual image. Cusack argues that just “river narratives […]
have tended to metamorphose to accommodate the dominant religious and political
groups in different cultures at different times […] The function of national riverscapes
had adapted to carrying the contemporary ideologies of the elite strata in the nationstate.”
13 A national riverscape, Cusack proposes, can be “regarded as a visual text that
forms part of a discourse in the Foucauldian sense; that is, it actively constitutes
national imaginings, but imaginings based on highly selected and readily identifiable
images of the river.”14 Using the symbolic potential of rivers as representing life and
time, Cusack focuses on the riverscape of the Volga and how it provided a metaphor
for the mythic stream of national history flowing unconstrained out of the past into the
future.
13 Cusack, Riverscapes, 8.
14 Ibid., 12–13.
15
Seascapes15 similarly emerged as an important new genre (re)presenting a
nation’s newly born yet already ancient mythos. This study will explore how these
elemental portrayals operated, specifically covering the Black Sea. The paintings of
this water realized by Aivazovsky fused a variety of identities; an understanding of his
seascapes affords new insights into this instance of nation-making. The present study
thus aims to portray the relevant combination of individual agency, suitable locations,
and imperial and national ingredients that went into this.
Tricia Cusack, using the members of the artistic environment of the Slavophile
debate of Russia, such as Isaac Levitan and Ilya Repin, claims the Volga River was
depicted to promote the Orthodox Christian Slavic Russian as the national archetype.
The present study, following Aivazovsky and his carefully selected Black Sea
depictions, stresses the image of the Black Sea as both the showcase of the empire
(then the nation), proving the rise of the Russian Empire as a rising maritime power
and the inner world of a nineteenth-century artist with multiple identities and how that
sea serves for each of these national, political, artistic, and cultural constructions.
Cusack discusses how art began to play a significant role in Russian
nationalism, mentioning that from the 1850s onward, a group of painters refused the
“high” art,16 turning their attention to nature to create realistic scenes. Many
15 Using Zygmunt Bauman’s argument, Tricia Cusack distinguished between river landscapes and
landscapes, claiming the former from the latter as suggestive of a temporal flow leading the nation to a
promising future. As Cusack mentions, “Rivers therefore have presented a potent metaphor for the
passage of time, for life, and for renewal in a way that solid landscape cannot do easily” (Ibid., 2). I
also argue that Aivazovsky’s seascapes divided in a thematic way in this study offer an excellent
metaphor for life and renewal and were appropriated as a symbol of imperial, then national, vitality. In
some cases, this vitality has seemed sacred as well as historical and merged with a religious or
spiritual story in which Aivazovsky’s examples have represented this merging efficiently.
16 Ibid., 137. For more information about the meaning of “high” art in the history of Russian panting
see: Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, Russian Realist Art, the State and Society: The Peredvizhniki and
Their Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, “The
Peredvizhniki and the Spirit of the 1860s,” Russian Review 34, no. 3 (July 1975): 247-265; Dmitry
Sarabianov, Russian Art from Neoclassicism to Avant-Garde (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990);
Rosalind P. Blakesley, The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757-1881 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2016).
16
intellectuals, including artists, writers, and art dealers, were involved in the process of
modernizing the basic elements of Slavophile culture, and the River Volga became a
national icon. In Aivazovsky’s appropriation of the images of Black Sea exploration—
rendered for use on the walls of the imperial palaces—in the newly founded
museums/art galleries, and in his official commissions of views of the Russo–Ottoman
wars of the Black Sea, we see the imperial house adapting the long-standing practices
of European rulers using visual propaganda to assert their authority. Here, the notion
of the seascape, as in the Volga riverscape, offers an insight into the ways that, in the
southern imperial spheres, the emulation of the practices of imperial powers often
opens up a space for the demonstration of Russia as an imperial maritime power.
However, the “Romantic” attachment Aivazovsky felt to the Black Sea has led to
criticism of his artistic career17 being outside of the Russian realist Slavophile circle.
Yet, the Black Sea has been fundamental to the Russian Empire for centuries (and is
still critically important);18 Crimea and the edge of the sea is the location where the
empire situated naval bases and where citizens came to love their warmer territories, a
paradisal myth, as discussed in Chapter I.
The ocean, the sea, and the seashore have also suffered from relative academic
neglect. Philip E. Steinberg’s unique book The Social Construction of the Ocean uses
the instruments of political geography and international relations to explore how the
oceans were perceived and used by nations and peoples. In social science, the river
17 Many nineteenth-century Russian art history studies have a tendency to exclude Aivazovsky from
the mainstream circle and eliminated his role as a “romantic seascape” painter, although the River
Volga became an iconic symbol of the Russian soul (or Herder-inspired notion of “folk”).
18 For the recent debate on Russia and Crimea, see: John Biersack and Shannon O’Lear, “The
Geopolitics of Russia’s Annexation of Crimea: Narratives, Identity, Silences, and Energy,” Eurasian
Geography and Economics 55, no. 3 (December 2014): 247-269; John O’Loughlin and Paul F.
Talbot, “Where in the World is Russia? Geopolitical Perceptions and Preferences of Ordinary
Russians,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 46, no. 1 (May 2013): 25-50; Mikhail D. Suslov,
“Crimea is Ours! Russian Popular Geopolitics in the New Media Age,” Eurasian Geography and
Economics 55, no. 6 (May 2015): 588-609.
17
and sea and the ocean is generally regarded as economic resource. Steinberg perceives
them rather than human territories, as geo-political spaces where social as well as
natural forces guide and control lives and destinies and thus also their imagination. He
cogently summarizes the book’s major themes: the sea is not a place but a space
“where social contradictions are worked through, social change transpires, and future
social relations are imagined.”19 As mentioned above, there have been relatively few
studies of visual art related to the seashore. Geoff Quilley, with a specific focus on
Britain, talks about “the low position of art history” despite “the obvious national
importance of all activities connected with the sea.”20 He suggests that “the very lack
of analytical engagement with the subject [of marine art] is … indicative of the degree
to which the maritime is naturalized as part of national historical consciousness.”21
Quilley’s Empire to Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of Maritime Britain
1768-1829, which explores the relationship between eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury
British maritime art and the growth of empire and the newly emerging concept
of nation, is helping to reshape this neglect.22 My study is an attempt to show how the
emergence of the idea of a maritime empire/nation and the multiple identities of an
artist and allegiances are embedded within a broader imperial identity, with a particular
reference to the artist Aivazovsky and to a geographical feature, the Black Sea. It
considers how the representation of the sea-space connects, covers, and rearranges
cultures and identities. This dissertation discusses and outlines the politics of identity,
and their volatilities and how these relate to conceptions of the seascape and how the
sea may function as a liminal space that allows a new identity to be formulated. It also
19 Philip E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 209.
20 Geoff Quilley, “Missing the Boat: The Place of the Maritime in the History of British Visual
Culture,” Visual Culture in Britain 1, no. 2 (2000): 81, 85.
21 Ibid., 84-85.
22 Quilley, Empire to Nation.
18
considers how shipwreck and mythological narratives expressed social and moral
prescriptions, acquiring a wider range of symbolic connotations, and how depictions
of battle paintings were reimagined and reworked; it shows how the iconography of
battles was represented in the context of imperial/national history studies and how art,
in turn, displayed a particular manifestation of empire, nation, sea, and the conception
of identity. The art of Aivazovsky is shown to be not simply illustrative of but integral
to these rich themes.
There is copious literature on Aivazovsky and his paintings, yet comparatively
little academic attention has been paid to either, especially in the disciplines of
humanities and social sciences. Guidebooks, and even single biographical
monographs, on Aivazovsky, provide a historical view from his birth to his death,
illustrated with his selected paintings, but they do not specifically focus on seascape
art nor on the empire, the identity, or the role of visual art in such discourses. The three
most well-known biographies23 on Aivazovsky—Minas Sargsyan’s The Life of the
Great Marine Painter: Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Nikolai Barsamov’s Ivan
Konstantinovich Aivazovsky 1817-1900, and Nikolai Kuzmin’s The Prisoner of the
Sea: Encounters with Aivazovsky—and the guidebooks (re)published for the 200th
anniversary of the artist’s death24 focus on the detailed life chronology of the artist and
a catalog of his pictures rather than on a seascape analysis in visual art or the mutual
relationship between the seascape and artist’s identity and its role in Black Sea
23 Minas Sargsyan also mentions this commission. Minas Sargsyan, Жизнь Великого Мариниста
Иван Константинович Айвазовский [The Life of the Great Marine Painter: Ivan Konstantinovich
Aivazovsky] (Feodosia, 2010); Nikolai S. Barsamov, Иван Константинович Айвазовский,
1817-1900 [Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 1817-1900] (Moscow, 1962); Nikolai Kuzmin,
Пленник Моря: Встречи С Аивазобским [The Prisoner of the Sea: Encounters with Aivazovsky]
(Moscow, 2017).
24 Nikolay Navauspensky, Великие Мастера Живописи: Иван Айвазовский [The Paintings of the
Great Master: Ivan Aivazovsky] (St. Petersburg, 2010); Elena N. Yevstratova, Иван Айвазовский:
Великий певец моря [Ivan Aivazovsky: The Great Singer of the Sea] (Moscow, 2017); Gianni
Caffiero and Ivan Samarine, Неизвестный Айвазовский [Unknown Aivazovsky] (Moscow: Slovo,
2016).
19
geography. Samarine and Caffiero’s English biography25 (with a great number of
pictures provided) Light, Water and Sky: The Paintings of Aivazovsky concentrates on
his life story chronologically, but without any particular focus on a theoretical
framework for art history. Shahen Khachatryan’s Aivazovsky: Well-Known and
Unknown26 and Vazken H. Davidian’s “Image of an Atrocity: Ivan (Hovannes)
Aivazovsky’s Massacre of the Armenians in Trebizond 1895”27 tend to focus on his
Armenian, identity, concentrating on the concept of an Armenian artist. At the same
time, an exhibition and international conference for the 200th anniversary of
Aivazovsky’s birth in 2017, organized by the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and the
essays written for the accompanying two-volume special issue28 of The Tretyakov
Gallery Magazine focused on his individual biography and a catalogue of his
paintings, but did not explore his intersected identity.
Appreciating Aivazovsky’s true complexity may have been made harder by his
greatest success: the aesthetic model that Aivazovsky developed the most and the most
effectively, his unique seascapes which would help shape a new standard of Russian
seascape painting. He did not “discover” or establish the genre; rather, he created a
new, extremely resonant idealization of the specifically Russian-connoted seascape.
For this, the Black Sea played a crucial role: he produced its new Russian (in both
meanings, imperial and national) version and vision, aesthetically accessible to large
audiences. Yet he did not understand or describe himself simply as (ethnically)
Russian; he was also aware of being – and choosing to be – an Armenian and a
Crimean, articulating both in his art as well.
25 Gianni Caffiero and Ivan Samarine, Light, Water and Sky: The Paintings of Aivazovsky (London:
Alexandria Press, 2012).
26 Khactrian, Aivazovsky: Well-Known and Unknown.
27 Vazken Khatchig Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity: Ivan (Hovannes) Aivazovsky’s Massacre of
Armenians in Trebizond 1895.” Études arméniennes contemporaines 11 (2018): 40-73.
28 Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 53, no.4 (2016) and Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54, no.1 (2017).
20
I argue that the processes of identity shaping which Aivazovsky’s art promoted
did not occur “naturally” or even unintentionally but through deliberate efforts on the
part of the artist and his patrons to produce and support art serving, if in a complex
manner, empire, nation, or both. Thus, in the nineteenth-century Black Sea world, the
creation of a “national” or “imperial” seascape was a matter of agency, the outcome of
conscious programs devised and carried out by cohesive networks integrating artist
and patrons. At the same time, however, he also articulated the Black Sea as an
intersected border and frontier zone, Aivazovsky depicted not only segmented
histories but also links between religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and
nations.
My study has recovered both the nation/empire-affirmative aspects of his work
and the complexity of his response to multiple intersecting contexts, recovering
(especially from nation-centric narratives) a versatile and highly successful artist and
an oeuvre crucially more diverse and complex than usually remembered. In sum, I
have sought to capture what was so special about Aivazovsky’s historical moment,
framed by empire and its spaces while also on the eve of but also still before the
cultural hegemony of the nation.
While being an art-historical study with distinct art-historical concerns, I have
placed equal importance on the broader historical context. The wider scope adopted
and an open methodological reach explains the variety of the visual and the breadth of
the textual material brought together. Diverse material from numerous sources has
been utilized, including a rich variety of images—paintings, drawings, illustrations—
as well as texts—including newspaper and journal articles, letters, diaries, literature,
and exhibition catalogs. A secondary, but no less important, role in the thesis is played
by state institutions, including the monarch himself. Of the great variety of sources
21
utilized in this study, the most influential of the visual sources have been the paintings
of Aivazovsky. Meanwhile, with regard to the texts, access to the greater body of
Aivazovsky-related archival documents29 and the Russian press has formed the axis of
much of the research presented. My physical observation of his great oeuvre in very
different geographies, including all the small corners of the Crimean Peninsula, and
age-old documents and newspapers alike has been a privilege and has provided
feelings that will remain indelible in my mind. Luckily, Aivazovsky’s paintings are
generally in public collections, and, with special permission, they are accessible to the
art historian. The majority of the main protagonist’s material objects presented in this
study are in museums and institutions, where the directors have been generous.
While the thesis is structured thematically, it follows a certain chronological
logic within and across the chapters. With the purpose of making the following text
more explicitly multifocal, Chapters 1, 2, and 3 approach the representation of
seascapes of generally the Black Sea region from the vantage point of thematic
selections that illuminate the organic connection of Aivazovsky with the empire,
nation, and the nautical geography, while Chapter 4 adopts the view of the intersected,
29 The bulk of the Aivazovsky-related archival material is located in St. Petersburg and Moscow: The
Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA, St. Petersburg) is one of the largest archives in Russia,
having received major funding from the highest bodies of state power in the Russian Empire, mainly
from the beginning of the 19th century until 1917, as well as public organizations, institutions and
individuals of pre-revolutionary Russia. The Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI,
Moscow) is the largest archive in Russia, where the richest materials on history, literature, music, fine
arts, architecture, cinema, and theater are focused. As a result, these two institutions provided for
much of my directly related research. The Russian State Archives of the Navy (RGAVMF, St.
Petersburg) was also crucial for my research since Aivazovsky became an official naval officer and
attended military expeditions with the navy. I also conducted research in the Manuscript Department
of the State Tretyakov Gallery (ORGTG, Moscow), where I was able to study correspondence
between the founder of the museum, and one of the famous art dealers of the nineteenth century, Pavel
Tretyakov and Ivan K. Aivazovsky. Also, the manuscript department and letters of the national
libraries of Russia (both in St. Petersburg and Moscow) gave me opportunities to conduct detailed
research and to record information for my source material and to classify and photograph these
sources. They possess rich, old, and rare books, exhibition catalogs, photograph albums, and journal
collections. Specifically, from the microfilms, it is possible to research 19th century Russian
periodicals. Moreover, in the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery (Feodosia), I conducted research in the
special archive of the museum and to observe various sketches, drawings, and personal notes of the
artist still unpublished.
22
“other” identity of the artist: Aivazovsky as an Armenian. Throughout the chapters,
while fundamental importance is given to exchanges between Russian imperial and
subaltern national discourses through the seascape descriptions, these exchanges are
often weaved seamlessly into the following narrative. Non-Western voices often left
outside the realm of art-history writing—and underestimated even in Russian art
historiography—are featured.
Chapter 1, “Imagining the Black Sea: Representation of the Russian Imperial
‘Paradise,’” considers how depictions of the Black Sea, with a special focus on the
Crimean Peninsula, contributed to a contemporary patriotic discourse that imagined
the Black Sea as a defensive boundary space and privileged the heroic – exploring and
martial – registers associated with maritime power. It firstly introduces the
phenomenon of the Russian expansion through the watery geography, especially from,
initially, the northern Baltic coasts and then the southern Black Sea, and considers the
changing discourses of the Russian empire defining herself as a maritime empire in
the nineteenth century. Secondly, as one of the iconic representations of this changing
status of Russia, it examines the Empire’s southern coastal depictions by Aivazovsky
as a paradisiacal naval myth of the land-based empire. Thirdly, the chapter inquiries
into Aivazovsky’s identity formation, assessing it within his life and local geographical
experiences. It considers the closer look taken at coastal depictions by the artist and
his multifaceted representations of this subject. It examines Aivazovsky’s maritime
geography representation, utilizing a mythical atmosphere associated with nineteenthcentury
Romanticism (to some extent, Orientalism) and proposes this as a result of
complex interplay between the artist and the rulers.
Chapter 2, “Historical Vision and the Representation of History in
Aivazovsky’s Battle Paintings,” explores the construction of a visual history of the
23
maritime–imperial nation. Focusing primarily on battle paintings, it probes these
images’ reflection of Russian military victories, especially with regard to the rival
Ottoman Empire. The chapter also focuses on Aivazovsky’s battle painting depictions
in terms of the nature and function of history as a discursive channel for articulating
the relationship between empire and nation.
Chapter 3, “God’s Storm: The Portrayals of Maritime Disasters and
Shipwrecks,” examines the shifting semiotics and symbolism of the shipwreck. The
chapter also probes the imaginative potential of shipwrecks, reviewing meanings that
have historically been attached to maritime disasters and, in general, human suffering
at sea. Addressing a range of political, religious, aesthetic, and environmental
concerns, this cross-cultural chapter will shed new light on changing attitudes to the
sea as a national and imperial space.
Chapter 4, “The View from Ararat: The Articulation of Aivazovsky’s
Armenian Identity,” queries and supplements Aivazovsky’s self-representation as a
loyal and patriotic Russian imperial subject by focusing on works where he articulated
himself as an Armenian. Considering the substantial number of depictions of
landmarks associated with Armenian national discourse among his paintings, I explore
how Aivazovsky represented Armenian nation-building myths and how these works
have become nationally iconic. Paying close attention to his renderings of Armenian
myth-scapes and resonant yet rarely researched images that he produced for
international humanitarian campaigns to highlight the persecution of Armenians, I
explore the relationships between discursive politics, art, and the shaping of modern
Armenian identity.
24
CHAPTER 1
Imagining the Black Sea: Representation of the Russian Imperial “Paradise”
Introduction
Nikolai Karamzin, a founding father of Russian nationalism, defended Russia
in the first part of his 1802 essay “On Love of the Fatherland and National Pride”
against an argument that it had proved susceptible to the extreme nature of its
environment and the lack of natural beauty there. “The native land is dear to one’s
heart,” wrote Karamzin, “not because of the beauty of its landscapes, its clear sky or
its pleasant climate.” Nevertheless, he had to admit that a warm and attractive natural
environment helped reinforce patriotic feelings: “I do not say that natural beauties and
advantages have no effect whatever on the general love for one’s native land – some
lands richly endowed by nature can be so much that dearer to their inhabitants. I am
saying only that these beauties and advantages are not the main foundation of men’s
physical attachment to their country.”30
Although Karamzin expresses an assertion of Russian nationality, he also
shows a discomfort of the native climate and terrain. Not only did Karamzin believe
that this vast native land possessed little natural beauty, he also acknowledged that the
lack created a loss for his countrymen.31 Manifestly, an important aspect of Russian
identity was expressed in attitudes toward and interactions with the natural
environment. Thence also, the growing body of works focusing on Russian history and
30 Nikolai M. Karamzin, “Love of Country and National Pride,” trans. Jaroslaw Pelenski, in Russian
Intellectual History: An Anthology, ed. Marc Raeff (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978), 107. Also,
see Ely, This Meager Nature, 3.
31 Even until the First World War, Russian attitudes toward the native landscape remained
problematic. The sights and recovery of Western Europe had continued to exert a magnetic attraction
on Russian travelers right up to the Great War. For the newly formed Russian Society of Tourism and
Study of Fatherland, on the other hand, the war was seen as an opportunity to reorient Russian
travelers away from Europe toward new horizons within the Empire.
25
the national claims to the Black Sea.32 As Georges Nivat argues, the creation of a
special attitude to Russian space is one of the founding ideals of Russian identity.33 I
agree, to some degree, with Nivat that the image of the Russian landscape is best
understood as a founding myth of national identity. Yet, I am interested mainly in the
role of land/seascapes and specifically the marine paintings of Aivazovsky in the
creation of this myth and what they can tell us about the way Russia defined itself a
maritime empire and later conceived itself as a maritime nation.
Closely focusing on a number of Aivazovsky’s paintings, this study places
Crimea in the broader historical and political context of nation and empire. Crimea and
its various representations are employed as a site in which to explore the breadth and
implications of Russian beliefs and identities. This chapter focuses on the interaction
of places, ideas, and people through their connection with Aivazovsky, not only did
they set up a new settlement in Crimea, but they also constructed a new iteration of the
Russian identity as both nation and empire. So, I argue that Aivazovsky’s seascape
work was not a minor genre of interest mostly to nautical specialists but rather located
as central to a newly formalized art establishment. It emerged reflexively as a narrative
vehicle through which nineteenth-century Russians could see and learn about their
heroism and virtue as national endeavor and natural trait.
The waters of the Black Sea were long known to escape through the straight to
the west, flowing through the Bosphorus, the Marmara, and the Dardanelles to gain
the Mediterranean.34 The Black Sea had long been a significant trade route for
32 There is a significant number of works focusing on the relationship between Russian identity and its
nature in Siberia, Central Asia, and the Steppes. I will explain this issue later in this chapter.
33 Georges Nivat, “Le paysage russe en tant que mythe,” Rossija/Russia: studi e recherché (1988):
7-20.
34 Neal Ascherson, “Sea with a Heart of Darkness,” Independent, June 18, 1995,
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/sea-with-a-heart-of-darkness-1587017.html. With
Fernand Braudel’s famous work on Mediterranean world, it is possible to speak about the
Mediterranean as a “meaningful place.” However, it is difficult to say the same about the Black Sea.
King, The Black Sea, 3-4.
26
Byzantines, Ottomans, and Russians, and it was also seen as the boundary between
Russia and the West. Russian discourses concerning domination over the Black Sea
(specifically the Crimean region) from the 1770s, when explorers claimed the right to
have a fleet there,35 were intimately linked to the shifting place of this geography in
the Russian imagination. It is in this context that I interrogate Russianness, as the
centralizing state looked make the upheaval from a land-based (backward, agrarian)
empire to emerge as a maritime (modern, industrializing) power.
I hope to show that Aivazovsky’s Crimean/Black Sea depictions were
profoundly involved in national identity formation,36 specifically through their
contributions to the creation of Russian seascape imagery. Rather than intentionally
emphasizing the most public and well-known depictions of Russian landscapes across
a broad spectrum of cultural endeavors, the aim of this study is to explore the artistic
sensitivity and ingenuity of Aivazovsky as a cultural figure who invented and
interpreted Russian seascape imagery throughout his artistic life. Aivazovsky’s
Crimean commission sets out a very complex relationship between the artist, the
spectator, and the wider public, at the center of which is the production of a national
school of art, though this use of nation suggests an expanded—indeed, imperial—
sense of national art in seeking to explain why an empire like the Russian should have
wanted for such an ornament to adore its great territorial domain. The implication,
35 Two long-running wars against the Ottoman Empire, a Crimean invasion, a steady advance toward
the Northern Caucasus, and the ambitious – if not realized – “Greek Project” to regain Constantinople
were the hubs of a Southern policy which was among Catherine the Great’s ruling principle. For more
information, see: Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 115; Kelly O’Neil, Claiming Crimea: A History of Catherine
the Great’s Southern Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); Larry Wolff, “Imagining
Eastern Europe: Fiction, Fantasy, and Vicarious Voyages,” in Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of
Civilization on the Minds of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 89-143.
36 Although there is an ongoing debate, that it is inaccurate to apply nationalism theories into a
Russian context before the breakup the Soviet Union, it is clear that in nineteenth-century Russia, as in
contemporary Western Europe and the USA, an exclusive sense of national consciousness was a
developing issue. David G. Rowly, “Imperial versus National Discourse: The Case of Russia,”
Nations and Nationalism 6, no. 1 (January, 2000), 23 and Cusack, Riverscapes, 127.
27
therefore, is that the formation of distinctive marine art is consequent upon imperial
opulence and power.
Establishing a wider context for Crimea, one of conquests, colonialism, and
identity negotiation, this chapter interrogates conventional representations. Russian
and Western narratives alike have tend approach the region as the garden of Catherine
II (r. 1762–1796), as an fairytale land of mystique somehow outside of and irrelevant
to the practical demands of its time.37 The aim of this chapter is to see the seascape as
an analytical category (as the landscape is), not simply a genre of art history but more
a category that moves between art history and history, particularly the history of the
seascape and the recent conceptualizations of the issue. By doing this, I seek to place
Aivazovsky’s seascape/marine paintings on Crimean geography38 within a wider
context of the nineteenth-century artistic sphere in Russia and to examine the ways in
which marine painting, particularly those works depicting the natural beauty of the
Crimea, helped to shape conceptions of nation and empire. At issue is the degree to
which marine paintings, products of an intersection between the naval and artistic
spheres, were able to fulfill their potential role in the public sphere. By picturing the
struggle for control of the Black Sea, which would ensure the success of Russia’s
37 In his article on the appropriation of the Crimea, Andreas Schönle discusses a letter from Grigorii
Potemkin to Catherine II. Potemkin wrote: “The conquest of Crimea will neither strengthen nor enrich
you, but it will bring tranquility.” However, although Potemkin indicated that Crimea would not, in
fact, strengthen the empress, in the same letter, contradictory to his argument, he also supports the
theory of taking military control of the Black Sea. Andreas Schönle, “Garden of the Empire:
Catherine’s Appropriation of the Crimea,” Slavic Review 60, no. 1 (spring, 2011): 1-23. For more
information about the Russian annexation of the Crimea see: Sara Dickinson, “Russia’s First “Orient”:
Characterizing the Crimea in 1787,” Kritika 3, no.1 (winter 2002): 3-25. Also, the memoirs of
Catherine the Great gives important information about the annexation. For more information about the
memoirs of the Tsarina see: Monika Greenleaf, “Performing Autobiography: The Multiple Memoirs
of Catherine the Great (1756-96),” The Russian Review 63 (July 2004): 407-426.
38 According to Neil Ascherson, the story of the Black Sea starts with the Crimea: “The Crimean
Peninsula has functioned as a sort of theatre, an apron-stage, for events important to the whole Black
Sea region and its peoples. The Greeks made the Crimea the center of their trading empire and so did
the Italians a thousand years later; the Crimean War was fought here in the nineteenth century, and the
Crimea was the scene of some of Hitler’s and Stalin’s worst atrocities in the twentieth. In 1945, the
Yalta conference held on Crimea’s southern tip became the code-name for Europe’s division during
the Cold War.” Ascherson, The Black Sea, 11.
28
imperial claims, Aivazovsky’s seascapes represented Russian national identity as an
imperial power. Also, the depictions of the sea (specifically the Black Sea) gave him
an autonomous starting point from which to position himself.
Aivazovsky is much more explicit about the imperial dimension. Within his
overall scheme, landscapes—particularly the seascape of Russian watery territorial
domains—and national history are taken as the two dominant genres and subjects for
the painter, surely a recognition of the profound effect and the importance of both of
these for nineteenth-century Russian culture. This chapter devotes considerable space
to the painterly genre of the seascape, which appears as a touchstone for the problems
of construing Russian art, perhaps because of the relative novelty of the genre, with
the consequent difficulty of establishing any clear aesthetic guidelines for its practice
and meanings. More significantly, in the case of seascape painting, this difficulty has
been enforced by the recent unprecedented development of global travel, research, and
discovery and by Russian maritime exploration and imperial expansion, the impact of
which has been to transform seascape painting as a genre and to redefine seascape
artists’ profession.
Russian expansion and resettlement (in my case, the Crimean expansion)
cannot be separated from the environment in which they take place, and, as Nicholas
B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader, and Willard Sunderland point out, “the interplay
between colonizers and the natural environment […] unfolded as an essential dynamic
wherever and whenever colonization occurred.”39 And as an increasing body of
writings on Russian history and colonialism show, the natural environment was
39 Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader and Willard Sunderland, “Russian Colonizations: An
Introduction,” in Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History
(London: Routledge, 2007), 14.
29
approached in this context as an important aspect of national identity as well as a aspect
of the imperial image.
Willard Sunderland’s Taming the Wild Field explores the meaning of the Great
Steppe for Russians, not only that they could physically occupy it but also how it
developed in the Russian imagination, transiting during the eighteenth century from
the antithesis to the essence of Russianness.40 Also, Mark Bassin looks at colonization
of the Amur region in the middle of the nineteenth century, where he looks at the
conflict between the pervasive regional myth of Russia’s “very own New World,”
comprising a “vast, virgin, and essentially empty territory,” on the one hand, and the
need, on the other, to construct the land as Asian and savage and thus demanding from
Russia a civilizing mission.41
Away from the colonial frontier, Christopher Ely, uses landscape painting as
an inquiry into the open steppe, vast, uncultivated, and unrestrained, which he
portrayed people during the late imperial period as standing for true, unencumbered
Russianness. He notes that the peoples themselves viewed the land as essential to their
Russian identity, citing V. G. Korolenko, a prominent writer who had been forced to
leave his homeland to Siberia, who wrote in 1901, “We are Russian because we were
born in Russia; from birth we have breathed Russian air and gazed upon Russia’s sad
and desolate but also sometimes beautiful nature.”42
Geographical terrains were transformed from a collection of separate localities
with relatively permeable boundaries into the modern inviolable national homeland,
the material benefits and scenic beauty of which became the national birthright of all
40 Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wield Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
41 Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the
Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 10, 275.
42 For Korolenko’s quote, see Ely, This Meager Nature, 3.
30
the nation’s citizens. Regarding the Crimea, I argue, geographic determinism coexisted
with a view of the land as a beautiful, heavenly, fairytale landscape that was soon
reimagined as Russian.
Painting the Russian Picturesque: Aivazovsky in Crimea
“Aivazovsky! I rule on land, and you rule at sea!”43
One ardent admirer of Alexey G. Venetsianov’s (1780-1847)44 work greeted
an 1824 exhibit of his paintings as a major event: “We have finally seen the arrival of
an artist who has turned his wonderful talent toward the fatherland alone, toward the
depiction of the object that surrounds him, that are near to his heart to ours.”45 This
review was written in the journal Отечественные записки46 [Notes of the
Fatherland] by its founder and primary contributor during the 1820s, Pavel Svinin.
Christopher Ely asserts Svinin detected a sympathetic mind at work behind
Venetsianov’s paintings, perhaps because he had chosen as his own life’s work the
promotion of the beauty and importance of his native land. He undertook this task “by
43 The painter Kirill Lemokh, a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts and a student at
Aivazovsky’s studio, described that the artist had a very intimate connection with the Tsar Nicholas I:
“When the Tsar took a paddle steamer out to sea, he took Aivazovsky with him. Standing on one
paddle wheel cover, the Tsar called out to Aivazovsky, who was standing on the other one,
‘Aivazovsky! I rule on land, and you rule at sea!’” Natalya Buyanova, “The Great Seascape Artist and
the Russian Imperial Family,” The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 53, no. 4 (2017), 49.
44 Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov was a Russian artist known for his paintings and a commitment to
peasant life and common people. The rural iconography of Venetsianov focused on the importance of
the peasant at the time, especially in Slavophile thought. The common citizens, or narod, were the real
carriers of the national spirit and Russian uniqueness. Rosalind P. Blakesley, The Russian Canvas,
191. As Molly Brunson indicates, that perspective could be as easily applied to the mundane
experiences of everyday life as to a historical or religious scene. “Perspective thus became essential to
Venetsianov’s expansion of the repertoire of Russian painting, making the humble people and places
of the empire visible and available to artistic representation, in many cases for the first time.” Molly
Brunson, “Gogol Country: Russia and Russian Literature in Perspective,” Comparative Literature 69,
no. 4 (2017), 379.
45 A. V. Kornilova, ed., Алексей Гаврилович Венецианов: статьи, письма, современники о
художнике [Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov: Articles, letters and contemporaries about the artist]
(Leningrad, 1980), 49.
46 Отечественные записки [Notes of the Fatherland] was a long-running Russian literary magazine,
which featured several major novels, such as Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov (1859) and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s The Adolescent (1875). The tsarist authorities closed Notes of the Fatherland in 1884.
Charles Ruud, Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906 (Toronto:
Toronto University Press, 1982), 198-199; Hosking, Russia and the Russians, 298-299.
31
creating Notes of the Fatherland as a sort of running picturesque guidebook to
provincial Russia.”47
In these works, Svinin had focused on the appearance and beauty of the natural
landscape, which was standard practice in the picturesque travelogues of his day.
However, natural scenery never played a significant role in Svinin’s accounts of
provincial Russia. He conceived his native land in a different way. Notes of the
Fatherland became Svinin’s vehicle for fulfilling his debt to his country. He wrote and
edited its pages in the spirit of national patriotism, offering up the journal as a lesson
in Russian history, geography, architecture, and archeology, rather than simply a guide
to the beauty of the natural landscape. Svinin’s conception of tourism was less an
escape from the present than an engagement with the past, which concealed within
itself essential knowledge of the “national character” that would generate Russian
pride and dignity. By emphasizing the appearance and historical importance of the
monumental buildings, Notes of the Fatherland set a pattern that would be followed
by future writers and artists. Most importantly, Svinin’s journal was important in
representing how provincial Russia should not be reflected as an empty wilderness,
rather was crowded with picturesque points of interest that deserved to be appreciated
and studied.48
The attempt to fashion a picturesque image of the Russian countryside would
remain an important concern, and picturesque travelogues of the Russian countryside
continued to appear into the early 1850s.49 Painters and travel writers had been able to
draw on certain features of the countryside to create an isolated and limited picturesque
47 Ely, This Meager Nature, 73.
48 Ibid., 74-75.
49 See, for example, D. I. Matskevich, Путевые заметки [Travel Notes] (Kiev, 1856); O. P.
Shishkina, Заметки И Воспоминания Русской Путешественницы [Notes and Memoirs of a
Russian Traveler] (St. Petersburg, 1843); Vadim V. Passek, Очерки России [Sketches of Russia]
(Moscow, 1840).
32
landscape. But by the mid-1820s, evidence of a fundamental revision of Russian
landscape imagery had already begun to appear in the work of Russia’s foremost
national poet, Aleksandr S. Pushkin (1799-1837). Pushkin reconsidered the entire
question of landscape aesthetics in his work, and once he had discarded traditional
assumptions, he formulated new ways to appreciate his native terrain. The aesthetic
model he developed would become an important foundation for a new standard of
Russian landscape depiction and appreciation in subsequent years. It should be noted
that Pushkin’s innovative landscape imagery has often been described as a sort of
literary conquest of new territory, in which his unflinching honesty and remarkable
talent led him to see and portray the real Russian landscape for the first time. Pushkin
certainly did describe Russian scenery more accurately than his predecessors had, but
as Christopher Ely shows, he did not so much “discover” a landscape heretofore
invisible to eyes that could appreciate only idyllic nature, rather created a new
idealization of Russian terrain that made the landscape interesting and admirable to
Russian readers. He “discovered” ways to make the Russian countryside aesthetically
accessible to his public, as did Aivazovsky.50
One of Russia’s most picturesque journeys was undertaken by Aivazovsky,
who was already then a talented painter at the Imperial Academy of Arts; he received
a gold medal and was sent to Europe for his further education.51 In 1837, the Academy
of Arts, with the approval of the Ministry of Court, decided to send Aivazovsky for
two years to the Crimean lands (his hometown) before his European voyage and
50 Ely, This Meager Nature, 78-79.
51 In a note written by the President of the Academy of Arts, A. N. Olenin, to the Ministry of Imperial
Court on October 3, 1837 “Academician Aivazovsky was awarded for his excellent success in his
works about the genre of marine painting of the first-degree gold medal, which entails travelling
abroad for the improvement of his technique […]” Report of the President of the Academy of Arts
letter to the Minister of the Court, October 3, 1837, transcript in Minas Sargsyan, G. Artunian and G.
Shatirian, Айвазовский: Документы и материалы [Aivazovsky: Documents and Materials] (Erevan:
Aistan, 1967), 20-21.
33
provided funds for him to travel through Russia’s southern provinces and paint,
particularly, seascapes that illuminated the beauty of Russian shores.52 In respect of
tracking the fashion of illustrating the Russian picturesque, Aivazovsky’s mission was
no exception. In 1838, the Ministry of the Imperial Palace funded the brothers Grigory
and Nikanor Chernetsov to travel the length of the River Volga, from Rybinsk to
Astrakhan, in a “floating studio,” outfitted to help them sketch and paint their
impressions.53
When this search by the Chernetsovs’ for a distinctly Russian scenic identity
was being made, the novel idea in Russia of river travel as a pleasurable activity was
already well established in the West.54 Of course, the civilized consumers of the novel
and poem and etching and painting would have imbibed a sense of what was a
distinctly “Russian” nature. From the poetry and novels of Aleksandr S. Pushkin
(1799-1837), Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), and Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) and from
52 A Report by the President of the Academy of Arts to the Minister of Court on the decision of the
Academic Council to send I. K. Aivazovsky on fieldwork in Crimea and then abroad for his
improvement: “The Council decided that it would be more useful for Aivazovsky before his departure
to Europe to stay one or two years in Crimea to study marine paintings that depict the southern shores
of the Russian landscape under the supervision of the Academy.” Russian State Historical Archive
[RGIA], fund 789, inventory 1, part II, item 1679, p. 12-13. However, with the tsar’s permission,
Aivazovsky was ordered to leave for Crimea not for two years, as decided by the Academy council,
but for one. In a letter written by the Minister of the Imperial Palace, P. M. Volkonsky, dated February
14, 1838: “The Emperor commanded […] six paintings of the academician Aivazovsky, […] to pay
him three thousand rubles from the Cabinet; give these paintings to the Academy of fine Arts, and
allow him to go to Crimea for one year to paint there, so that these, upon returning a year later, will
represent the highest discretion.”
53 According to a ministry decree, the Chernetsovs had been commissioned to “draw from nature the
beautiful places of both banks of the Volga in panoramic views.” The purpose of their task was to
document the beauty of the great river: “At the time as this voyage,” this Ministry specified, “they are
intended to take for their subjects general view of the cities, sizable villages, other picturesque sites,
places marked by historical events, vestiges from antiquity, clothing and other finds that, in whatever
way, merit attention.” G. V. Smirnov, “Grigory Grigorovich Chernetsov and Nikanor Grigorovich
Chernetsov,” in Русское Искусство Очерки o Жизни и Творчестве Художников [Russian Art:
Essays on the Life and Work of Artists], ed., A. I. Leonov (Moscow, 1958), 549.
54 By 1800, accounts of picturesque routes in Europe and the United States included Lynne Withey,
Grand Tours and Cook’s Tours: A History of Leisure Travel 1750 to 1915 (London: Aurum Press,
1998), John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), and Martin Farr and Xavier Guégan, eds., The
British Abroad since the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 1: Travelers and Tourists (Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2014).
34
the paintings of Aleksei Savrasov (1830-1897), Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), and Isaak
Levitan (1860-1900), they received the image and sensed the vast, flat plains, rustic
rurality, heavy skies, and dense forests. Generally, this idiomatically and
quintessentially Russian landscape was pit against the spectacular beauty of western
Europe, the Caucasus, and the Crimea.55
Especially during the reign of Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855), travelers saw the
provincial landscape as an open, unattractive territory. Visiting Russians experienced
a striking natural beauty and immense historical importance in western Europe as
opposed to the undifferentiated terrain at home. Thus, their own sense of place and
national self became characterized as quiet or dull, with simple beauty perhaps, but
essentially unspectacular and decidedly less than picturesque. Fedor M. Dostoyevsky
(1821-1881) asked rhetorically in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, “Does there
exist a Russian who does not know Europe twice as well as Russia? I say twice only
out of courtesy, ‘ten times’ would be more accurate.”56 The demarcation of a scenic
image of the southern shores of Russian terrain was to follow another, linked
trajectory, and Aivazovsky’s Crimean journey was to provide one travelling vista of
this.
55 In her memoir, the eldest daughter of Pavel Tretyakov, a famous Russian art patron of the
nineteenth century, Vera P. Ziloti mentions her family voyage to Crimea and how it was influential in
her life: “Russian south, Little Russia, even from the windows of the car fascinated us. The first time
we saw the Russian expanse and the Steppes. How beautiful was the bay of Sevastopol! I saw the
open sea from the mountain of the St. George Monastery, I will never forget the feeling of an infinite
horizon. We drove to Yalta through the Baydar Gate on horseback. Tatar villages were our first exotic
experience. Going down the Baydar along the swirling wonderful, smooth roads was so exciting. We
drove up to Yalta in the darkness, and Yalta, bathed in stars of lights, merged with the stars in the dark
sky.” She also relates a memory of Aivazovsky: “We saw Mount Ayu-Dag, which we had long known
from Aivazovsky’s painting. Aivazovsky just in that fall lived in the Crimea. Accidentally, he came to
visit us on the day of my birthday, October 6, when I was 9 years old. He seemed to us too important,
especially his sideburns.” Vera P. Ziloti, В доме Третьякова [In the House of Tretyakov] (Moscow:
Tretyakov Gallery, 2016), 217-18.
56 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, trans. Richard Lee Renfield (New
York: Criterion Books, 1955), 35.
35
This is not to say that Russian landscape imagery had not developed its own
forms of distinct value in literature, criticism, and travel writing by the mid-nineteenth
century. On the contrary, the written word was depicting Russianness in and through
the land as something quite admirable. In painting, however, a solid body of work
presenting the nation’s landscape as a new aesthetic had not yet emerged. Also, taking
for granted the strict rules and censorship environment era of Nicholas I, the artists, in
service to the state, subordinated art to the court.57 As Aivazovsky’s official
commission by Tsar Nicholas I suggests, Aivazovsky was not simply charged with
describing a historical evolution in Russian scenery in art but with the civic
significance and function of art in a national context and with how improvements in
art were to be linked to the national constitution and to improvements in taste and
refinement.
Both the material and the appearance of Russia’s southern coastal (the Crimea,
the Black Sea) scenery offer strikingly new picturesque opportunities for artistic
practice that are not only pleasant but are universal and of consistent quality
57 Elizabeth K. Valkenier, Russian Realist Art: The State and Society: The Peredvizhniki and Their
Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 4. Throughout the early nineteenth century,
Russia’s knowledge of and passion for fine arts was limited to a few aristocratic patrons and appeared
to adhere to European scholarly concerns regarding portraiture and scenes of history. For more
information, see John Bowlt, “Russian Painting in the Nineteenth Century,” in Art and Culture in
Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1983), 114-15. For their study and subsequent career, artists relied on the state, and Nicholas I, an
autocrat and supporter for the visual arts, presided over official art decreed by the Minister of Public
Enlightenment, Count Sergei Uvarov, in 1833. This decree sustained three guiding principles:
autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality. (For the political side of this decree, please see footnote 83.)
Each of these concepts was reflected by particular forms of artistic medium and genre: autocracy was
represented by historical themes, orthodoxy by icon production and religious subjects, and nationality
by genre scenes. S. Frederick Starr, “Russian Art and Society, 1800-1850,” in Art and Culture in
Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1983), 105-7. However, by the 1850s, some members of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Academy of
Arts were initiating a new type of art intended to move from Western models in favor of Russian and
Slavophile expression. This new path would uphold and conflate two of the earlier principles of
official art, orthodoxy and nationality, although the latter was to be more precisely defined than
previously, more exclusive and more dominant. Cusack, Riverscapes, 138. These three aspects of
official art continued to be expressed in Aivazovsky’s paintings, while autocracy was excluded from
the new formation as Aivazovsky adhered to his “bureaucratic” networking and was spoiled by the
official commissions, which sometimes caused him to be a target.
36
throughout every part of the seascape. The Empire, it seems, was an unrivaled source
of painterly potential, in much the same way that the Crimean landscapes supplied an
abundance of discourses for the Russian Empire, which was gaining military control
over the Black Sea. This also provides just about every component necessary for the
realization and articulation of national identity, according to the formulation of the
modern political theorist, Anthony Smith, who identifies several features essential to
the articulation of national identity on a Western model of the nation-state. Principal
among these is “a historic territory, or the idea of homeland” in relation to which are
generated “common myths and historical memories” and a “common mass public
culture.”58 In Aivazovsky’s first commission (commissioned by the Academy of Arts,
later approved by Tsar Nicholas I), describing Russia’s southern coastal territories, the
Crimean region, and the Black Sea coast are “homelands,” a precondition for every
aspect of national character by which the very being of people is defined by watery
nature, including fights against nature (storms, shipwrecks) and fights against the
enemy for the hegemony of these impressive maritime domains.
How many changes in my concepts of nature, how many new delights I have
achieved, yet how much still awaits me, which now seems hidden behind the golden
horizon, which requires much time in order to reach […] I observe nature from the
peaks of the hills, perched higher than the clouds, and the horizon continues for 20
58 Anthony Smith defines nationalism as “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining
autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute
an actual or potential nation.” Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada
Press, 1991), 74. There is almost total consensus among contemporary historians that nations and
nationalisms are modern phenomena. From the early 1980s, Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson,
Anthony Smith, and others stressed the nations’ “ethno-symbolic” character and their reliance on
actual or “imagined” historical roots. Constructivist theories of nationalism have designed nations as
imagined, constructed, or invented categories. Historians have cogently shown that the recovery of the
history of a nation generally involves the invention of a pattern that contains a migration story, a
founding myth, a golden age, etc. This view finds its voice particularly in Benedict Anderson, who
perceives and depicts nationalism as a “cultural construct” or as something “invented, imagined.”
They are imagined as limited, sovereign, and as a community. In particular, see: Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 1983);
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) and
Anthony D. Smith, “Ethnic myths and ethnic revivals,” European Journal of Sociology, 25 (1984),
292-293.
37
versts59 in front of me, unlike in the north, but by 200 and 300 versts there is much to
go deeper and your eyesight will not collide, as you have in the north, with Chukhon’s
Laibas,60 and here also battleships, slightly visible through the clouds that rub across
the sea and the whole landscape is made of clouds, and all this is under you. That is
our Crimea!61
Through Aivazovsky’s picturesque depictions of the Crimean region, this
chapter, therefore, intends to identify a spatio-temporal shift through time from landbased
empire to maritime empire (then nation) in terms of the entrance into modernity.
It emphasizes the prime importance of the Black Sea as material link—the only
channel, in fact—between Russia and the Aegean and the Mediterranean worlds in this
period, and thus asserts the importance of the representation of this maritime. The
visual and non-visual imagery of the Black Sea functioned for Russian as an
articulation of the particular relationship between empire as heartland and province as
coastal metropolis.
Indeed, the image of the maritime is manifestly one of displacement and
extension for the bounded landmass of a nation to its colonial or imperial territories.
The received idea of the empire, despite the rising claim of its maritime status, has
been conceived in opposition to the sea: the classic image of the Russian Empire at its
height as consisting of far-flung Siberian forests and Central Asian Steppes, presiding
over Caucasian possessions and Oriental-Asiatic subject populations supposes a
basically territorial empire. Yet, this is an image strongly associated with the prenineteenth-
century empire. By the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the clear
distinction between land-based and sea-based imperial definition became less visible
in the Russian domain. Similarly, there was not yet a dominantly territorial description
59 Verst is a Russian unit of length, equivalent to about 1.07 kilometers.
60 Chuckon refers to a Finnish tribe living in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, and laiba means a Finnish
boat.
61 A letter from I. K. Aivazovsky to A. R. Tomilov, dated March 17, 1839, transcript in Sargsyan,
Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 26-27.
38
of the empire. Indeed, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
composition of the empire was in a constant state of flux. From the decisive victory in
1774 against the Ottoman Empire to the ambivalent results of the Crimean War of
1853-56, the exceptional status of Central Asia, and the domestic and imperial crisis
of the 1820s, the profile of Russian imperial possessions changed dramatically and
consistently.
This chapter also points to a chronological shift as well as a geographical one.
While most of what follows is, in some way, concerned with the growing impact of an
imperial consciousness upon Russian culture of the nineteenth century, I also argue
that the maritime empire of discovery and encounter of the 1830s, so typified by the
imperial commissions, was superseded, by the 1840s, by a nationalism that absorbed
Russian enterprise. With the expansion of Russian imperial dominion during the
nineteenth century toward the Black Sea, cognate visual material proliferated in
abundance. However, this was increasingly assigned to a specialist category,
associated with scientific and geographical documentation and was regarded as having
greater relevance to recently established institutions such as the Imperial Russian
Geographical Society.62 What I identify as the project of Aivazovsky’s Crimean
62 The society was founded in 1845 in Saint Petersburg. Its official presidents were Grand Duke
Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia, 1845-1892, and Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia,
1892-191, although actually it was run by the vice-presidents, including Fyodor Litke (1845-1850;
1855-1857), Count Mikhail Muravyov (1850-1857), and Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky
(1873-1914). The Imperial Russian Geographical Society inspired figures not only in science but also
in art. In particular, Society member Aivazovsky painted the picture Ice Mountains in Antarctica
(1870) to perpetuate the achievement of the Russian navigators Bellingshausen and Lazarev, who
discovered Antarctica during their expedition. In that era, an achievement of this kind was a
tremendous step for mankind. For a history of the Russian Geographical Society, see: P. P. Semenov-
Tyan-Shansky, История Полувековой Деятельности Императорского Русского
Географического Общества, 1845-1895 [History of Activities of Imperial Russian Geographic
Society, 1845-1895] (St. Petersburg, 1896); W. Bruce Lincoln, Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tyan-
Shansky: A Life of a Russian Geographer (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1990). For
an analysis of the relationship between ethnography and the Society, see Nathaniel Knight, “Science,
Empire, and Nationality: Ethnography in the Russian Geographical Society, 1845-1855,” in Imperial
Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1998), 108-141.
39
voyage (1837-1840), that of amalgamating the roles of an eyewitness and seascape
artist, was an ambitious degree by a Russian artist commissioned by the tsar in the
mid-nineteenth century. Aivazovsky’s artistic, historical world view, I argue, was
displaced in Russian art by a nationalist focus that saw national life (for both Russians
and Armenians, as discussed in Chapter IV), seascape, and history as the most
appropriate subjects for art and, reciprocally, saw the state of Russian art and culture
as an index of national prosperity and social wellbeing. No doubt, there is an important
ideological dimension to the consequences of the divergence of culture and
imperialism in the nineteenth century; however, that is not a major concern for this
dissertation. Rather, I am concerned to identify and examine through one aspect—
Aivazovsky’s visual imagery through the dominant gaze of the sea—the particular
circumstances and significance of the moment when that divergence began.
In this chapter, I concentrate on those paintings completed by Aivazovsky as
an officially appointed artist by the Academy and the Imperial Court to the Crimean
region simply to draw the nature of the southern shores of the Russian Empire. In this
regard, I want to particularly question the apparent tension in the persona of the artist—
a seascape painter—in the cultural context of early nineteenth-century Russian
academic artistic circles, between, on the one hand, the requirement to be a detached,
objective, almost disembodied observer and recorder of places and events encountered
on his voyage and, on the other hand, the need to project a clear and distinctive artistic
personality that would meet increasing academic emphasis on painting and on the artist
as a unique creative sensibility, rather than a simple manual craftsman. This idea of
the artist as a unique individual was also increasingly allied to the greater prominence
of the value of creative genius, deeply implicated in the development of an ever-more
40
populated and competitive commercial marketplace for art.63 I will suggest that this
tension emerges, especially in Aivazovsky’s case, in the emphasis placed upon the
artist as an eyewitness and upon his works as firsthand accounts stressing his
subjective presence at the scenes depicted.
In addition to the extensive scope for the motives behind Aivazovsky’s
Crimean missionary voyage’s image-making provided here, there is an important
acknowledgment of the value of textual descriptions (through a rich collection of his
letters), which are corroborated throughout his voyage. In the immediate environment
of the Crimean voyage, it highlights and reinforces Aivazovsky’s appreciation of the
natural beauties of the southern Russian shores and of his presence and role as both an
eyewitness and a local Crimean. In the first place, this is manifested most clearly as an
issue of painterly style. Take, for example, the visual immediacy, compositional
inventiveness, and emphatic impasto and mark-making of paintings such as Moonlight
Night on the Crimea Gurzuf [figure 1], Yalta [figure 2], and Old Feodosia [figure
3].64 Far from St. Petersburg, from supervision and academic tasks, the young artist
gained a sense of freedom and complete independence. Nature had become the object
of his close study. He drew only from nature. However, some of the rules of academic
education still dominated him. Trying to get rid of them, he realized the need to study
nature, to know its beauty, to take from it something more important than the canons
of academic writing.
Yalta seemed very unusual at the time. Everything in it moved: waves, pinkish
clouds, and even the light, which would pass from the town buildings to the sea, which
63 Blakesley, The Russian Canvas, 220-221.
64 Although it is difficult to obtain the correct names for each painting, Aivazovsky mentioned his
paintings done for the Crimean voyage. As understood from letters, he was commissioned for the six
paintings but, during his voyage, he was able to finish five works. These mentioned above are the
paintings I was able to match from the letters and from Sargsyan’s biography of the artist.
41
was in the shade. As the painter himself used to say in the process of work, he studied
atmospheric changes, the play of light, shades in the waves in the sea, on the peaks of
the mountains, and on the trees. Creating a picture of Yalta, the artist stood en plein
air on the shore. Through the use of bluish, mute-green coloring, Moonlight Night in
Crimea Gurzuf succeeds in transmitting the elegance of the summer night and the
peace and romance of the south coast of Crimea. The painting also illustrates the small
clouds in Gurzuf floating over the bay, the moon dancing over Ayu-Dag quietly. In the
meantime, Old Feodosia, in warm weather, provides a glimpse of the artist’s home
town. The effects of daylight are shown in the sky on the pinkish clouds, on the sea,
and on the seashore. The most picturesque hill is surrounded by vineyards. The color
of the sea in the background was very similar to the color of the sky.65 The contrast
between the light sky and the dark seashore makes the picture more expressive. He
writes: “There [Crimea] I stayed until July 1838 and made some successful sketches;
from there I returned to Simferopol and in a short time painted many Tatars, then
arranged a workshop in my native land in Feodosia, where there is also my favorite
element: the Sea.”66
Remarkably sensuous and virtuoso paintings as they are, all their stylistic
qualities point to an artistic presence that is traced in the mark on the canvas, just as
the paintings themselves are a trace of the unfolding progress of the Crimean voyage.
These paintings’ extraordinary inventiveness, particularly their use of the plein air oil
painting technique (a technique new in Russia, especially when comparing them with
European examples), had been noted by the Academy of Art and his teachers. More
65 For the description of the paintings see: https://en.opisanie-kartin.com/description-of-the-paintingby-
ivan-aivazovsky-moonlit-night-in-the-crimea/.
66 Aivazovsky’s letter to the president of the Academy of Arts about his studies in Crimea with the
request to extend the term of the trip and allow him to participate in the military maneuvers of the
Russian squadron off the Caucasian coast. I. K. Aivazovsky’ letter to the President of the Academy of
Arts, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 27-30.
42
importantly, though producing works that obeyed the Academy’s instructions for a
visual record of the voyage, Aivazovsky was also able to assert his individualism both
as a physical presence through the paintings’ active mark-making and as a form of
talent in academic terms through their compositional and technical originality.
The art of the landscape was directly associated with the picturesque movement
since pictures, which manifested the artist’s skills of observation, were taken as a guide
for how to see. In the eighteenth century, the picturesque could have been defined by
the style of a picture. But by the nineteenth century, the picturesque connoted not
simply a style of composition but an entirely new way of seeing.
Authenticity versus Artificiality
Discussions of Aivazovsky’s seascapes have been cast in a language of
authenticity versus artificiality. On the one hand, the strength of Aivazovsky’s
seascapes managed to convey, in individual, concrete forms, the typical prevailing
character of Russian nature. On the other hand, Aivazovsky was accused of being
repetitive and continuously creating conventional idyllic seascapes. How is it possible
for two such contradictory readings of Aivazovsky’s seascape imagery to exist? This
question lies at the heart of Aivazovsky’s unique creative abilities. In a way, both
interpretations are correct. Aivazovsky engaged in the delicate balancing act of an
artist working and was very productive in the whole of the nineteenth century, quite a
long period. Most of Aivazovsky’s imagery keeps within the bounds of tradition, but
he ingeniously managed to both deploy the conventional imagery he had inherited
from his predecessors and devise a wholly original solution to the representation of
Russian nature as an aesthetic subject. He broke with the seascape imagery commonly
appreciated by his contemporaries, but in portraying the Russian countryside shores,
he did not simply convey the typical and prevailing character of Russian space; rather,
43
he worked to make an appreciation of unconventional seascapes possible for his
spectators. In order to understand the particular attainments of Aivazovsky’s land and
seascapes, it will be useful to follow his nature descriptions through the course of his
career. Based on a thematic way, this dissertation aims to explain Aivazovsky’s
responses to the idealization of Russian “space” through his “intersected identities.”
These pictures of the Russian southern seascape present a fresh idealization of
Russian maritime space. They represent an early expression of the desire, on the part
of Russian rulers, to identify with the marine-based empire. A long tradition of a
constantly increasing interest in navigational culture (since the time of Peter the Great)
as one of the remaining sources of a new definition of Russia as a maritime empire
already existed among Russian visual and literary culture. As early as Catherine II’s
generation, some members of the ruling class and artistic circles had taken an interest
in the visualization of maritime power. But Aivazovsky’s deliberate aestheticization
of a seascape associated with Russia’s nautical natural beauties reveals a new desire
for a deeper connection to maritime culture. The fantasy of immersion in the turquoise,
blue, green, and sometimes stormy gray space of the Russian shores marks the
beginning of a new aesthetic ideal.
Aivazovsky’s seascape depictions can thus be seen as part of the wider set of
negotiations surrounding the making and meaning of art that particularly confronted
artists involved in voyaging, exploring, and empire, and in the representation of a
rapidly expanding geographical consciousness in nineteenth-century Russia. And both
his mission as a naval officer and his circumspection with regard to the Academy of
Arts were likewise, in part, strategies for forging a career in this still novel area of
artistic practice.
44
The Historicizing Visual Order of the Russian Navy in the Art of Aivazovsky’s
Commissions
In this section, I will consider some further aspects of the visual representation
of the Russian Navy (particularly the Black Sea Fleet), with special reference to
Aivazovsky’s personal choice and the work produced by him for the Admiralty during
his Crimean voyage. Aivazovsky decided to leave Crimea with the Black Sea Fleet
under the command of General Nikolai N. Raevsky the Younger (1801-1843). He
wrote to the President of the Academy to ask permission to attend the Navy:
For a long time I did not dare to do this without asking for permission from
you, but, on the one hand, the convictions of General Raevsky accepted his petitions
in asking me this permission, on the other - the desire to see the sea battle with such a
luxurious nature and the thought that the image on the canvas of military heroic deeds
of our heroes will please his Imperial Majesty, and finally the advice of my well-wisher
Alexander Ivanovich Kaznacheyev - they decided me send the Argonauts to the
campaign, especially since A. I. Kaznacheyev himself, an old friend of Raevsky’s,
went with him almost for me.
So, I venture to ask the indulgence of Your Excellency, that, without waiting
for my superior permission, I decided to leave with the circle of this big event.
Confident of your generosity and thinking that it will not be unpleasant for you to see
my new experiences in depicting the plots of sea and coastal battles, I aggravate my
all-pervasive request for permission to be on military expedition with General
Raevsky, who himself writes about the military minister for his report to the Emperor,
as well as to postpone my holiday until the next spring.
In the course of this time, I will have time to finish everything and I will appear
to my superiors before the postponement. Here, on the shore of Asia, I managed to
draw portraits of many Circassian, linear Cossacks for future paintings, but now ships
and a fleet are standing in front of my eyes for taking troops, the day after tomorrow I
hope to see something that I have not seen, and maybe never in I will not see my life.
After the first landing, which will be about May 1, I will go to Feodosia to finish the
painting completely to the exhibition and then again come with the fleet to the second
and third landing, if for that will be your consent. I will finish all these stories till the
spring and come to Petersburg.67
During his first attendance at the naval maneuvers, Aivazovsky painted The
Landing at Subashi [figure 4], which he believed the Emperor would like, describing
the painting as the reason for his leaving Crimea and attendance with the Navy: “And
67 Ibid.
45
I hope that the latter [The Landing at Subashi] can be liked by the Emperor, who
already knows that I was left in the Crimea for this.”68
The Landing at Subashi reveals the Subashi Valley’s seacoast as quiet, yet
untouched by the troops. The palette of bright paints apparent with the naked eye on
the canvas tends to be in the middle. Huge ships are lined up in a row to prepare for
the enemy’s next attack. The view of the sea is absolutely irresistible, referring to
valiant defenders and the overwhelming strength of Russian mariners ready to fight
for their homeland until the last war.69 It was this experience, as Aivazovsky recounted
with regard to his view of the Black Sea, that enabled him to comment, via seascape
painting, upon history and to develop the hybrid genre of historical seascapes,70
(discussed in Chapter II). There is a real sense in which the Black Sea world was
becoming increasingly visible “at the same instant” through visual representation.
In the light of this work, I want to return to a more emphatically art-historical
focus (though this is not to impose any rigid distinction between art history and history,
between the lines seemingly now irretrievably and productively blurred). After these
naval experiences, Aivazovsky was made a naval officer with the right to wear naval
68 Aivazovsky’ letter to the Secretary of the Academy of Arts, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian and
Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 31-33. Also, see The attitude of the Military Minister to the
Minister of the Court for Aivazovsky’s participation in the expedition of General Raevsky: “The head
of the Black Sea coastal line and the Commander of the detachment active there, Lieutenant-General
Raevsky, having learned that from the highest permission the academician Gaivazovsky is in Crimea
for the removal of marine species, and believing that the majestic nature of the eastern shores of the
Black Sea, the squadron sailing and the military scenes in the occupation by the enemy the land will
be presented with items worthy of the brush of this artist, invited him to go on an expedition.
Meanwhile, referring to Aivazovsky’s intention to paint several types of eastern coast of the Black Sea
with oil paints, Lieutenant-General Raevsky, on the approaching date of this academician’s departure
to St. Petersburg, asked for his resignation in Crimea until the spring of next year and at the same time
solicited on providing him with travel allowances.” Ibid., 30-31.
69 For the description of the painting see: https://en.opisanie-kartin.com/description-of-the-paintingby-
ivan-konstantinovich-aivazovsky-landing-in-subashi/.
70 Geoff Quilley also considers and explains the hybridization of the genres in British maritime
painting and their important role in the transformation from empire to nation by using examples from
Hodges. For information, see Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill, eds., William Hodges 1744-1797: The
Art of Exploration (Greenwich: Yale University Press in association with the National Maritime
Museum, 2004).
46
uniform, and, in 1844, the Minister of the Imperial Court, Pyotr Mikhailovich
Volkonsky,71 under Tsar Nicholas I commissioned Aivazovsky to travel to several
major Russian ports.72 I will concentrate my discussion on a group of major intervoyage
paintings by Aivazovsky, considering them as art-historical or historicizing
artifacts, not just in the way they offer a schematic narration of the Black Sea navy and
the ports, but rather in the way they correspond and answer the development of the
discourse of maritime history itself in Russian culture at this time. Through reference
to a historicizing mode of pictorial representation, Aivazovsky offered a tentative, but
clearly discernible, visual ordering of the Black Sea that was substantially different
from other voyage artists, because of its relationship with the contemporary debate
over the history of Black Sea domination, a debate that was itself reciprocally
amplified and complicated by the encounter with the Black Sea. Importantly also, this
was referred for its own legitimation to the autoptic artistic presence of the artist as an
eyewitness. Aivazovsky’s historicizing order of the Black Sea was not, and could not
be, that of an “armchair traveler.”73 His claim to authority for his representations of
Black Sea seascapes derived from his having himself traveled on and recorded the
voyage, and from the benefit of his direct visual experience.
Two closely related paintings of six, the Sveaborg [figure 5] and Reval from
the 1843 Roadstead [figure 6], following a post-European period in his life, were
71 P. M. Volkonsky (1776-1852) was a military commander who rose to the position of Chief of
General Staff 1815-1823. While serving as the Acting Secretary of the Army from 1812 to 1823, he
was simultaneously the commanding general. He was in charge of the Russian forces at the Battle of
Austerlitz and served as an Ambassador at the coronation of Charles X of France in 1824. After that,
he assumed the role of Minister of Imperial Court and Properties from 1826 to 1852.
72 Minister of the Court Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky’s memorandum to the Imperial Academy of
Arts regarding commissioning Paintings from Aivazovsky: “The sovereign emperor commissioned
Aivazovsky to make oil paintings representing the main ports of the empire: 1. Kronstadt, 2. S.
Petersburg from the entrance to the Neva, 3. Peterhof Palace with fountains from the sea, 4. Revel
from the sea, 5. The fortresses of Sveaborg from the sea, 6. Gangut.” July 1844, Russian State
Historical Archive, fund 789, inventory 1, item 2870, p. 1. Minas Sargsyan also mentions this
commission. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 67.
73 I employ the term from Geoff Quilley: Quilley, Empire to Nation, 54.
47
painted at the direct request of the tsar and represent the roadstead used by the Russian
Navy and commercial ships. Combining an array of small passenger boats with larger
merchant and naval vessels, Aivazovsky represents the commercial and militarized
waters around the Baltic Sea as a microcosm of the Russian maritime economy—a
self-secure and regulated arena (of the northern coasts) in which the industrial and
military histories of the Russian Empire are connected. The pictures are large, forceful
statements—inescapable in the context of the tsar’s request—that consolidated the
direction of his previous ambitions for seascape painting while simultaneously
attempting to validate a different type of subject matter. The genre the pictures
epitomize might well be termed “poetic topography.”74 Previously, Aivazovsky had
rarely exhibited purely topographical scenes on such a commanding scale. Moreover,
most of the recognizable views he had shown before had been the result of
commissioned imperial depictions of the southern shores of Russia, which he had
always sought to imbue with a sense of naturalism, in terms of either a specified time
of day or an atmospheric effect. Aivazovsky’s naturalism, however, was never a
straightforward transcription; he was wedded to the traditional ideas of composing
images based on observation and wider experience in order to produce something more
idealized. As previously mentioned, the tsar asked for depictions of the Russian ports.
In their overlapping focus on the exposed coasts and ports in Russia, during the midnineteenth
century after the wars with both the Ottoman and Swedish empires, they
were implicitly conceived as a patriotic endeavor to celebrate the country’s hard-won
autonomy of this geography. Conceived as a set of Portal Views, the scenes depicted
74 In his article, Ian Warrell uses the notion of poetic topography for his analysis of J.M.W. Turner,
and I believe this is also valid for Aivazovsky since he hybrids the topographical concerns of the
imperial commission with the romantic and poetic sense of artistic value. Ian Warrell, “Shifting
Currents: Turner’s Depictions of Coasts, Rivers, Harbors, and Ports in the 1820s,” in Turner Modern
and Ancient Ports, ed. Susan Grace Galassi and others (New York: The Frick Collection in
association with Yale University Press, 2017), 25.
48
the key locations on the northern Russian coast—concentrating on the natural bulwark
off the cliff around Reval/Tallinn and from there, round the tip of the Baltic coasts, the
northern part of the Russian Empire.
Crimea Revisited: Seascapes of the Motherland
“The Russian Geographical Society has long recognized you [Ivan
Konstantinovich] [as] an outstanding geographical figure, the first Russian original
artist of the sea, which in Russian chronicles is called “Russian.”75
A veritable litany of outstanding Russian poets, writers, and artists had long
depicted the very soul of Russia in her lands. Crimea, on the other hand, was a littleknown
outskirt, and it was Aivazovsky’s artwork that introduced this new maritime to
Russian society. Russia’s picturesque land and seascape could be humble and gently
charming, as Pushkin, Venetsianov, Svinin, and Aivazovsky, among others,
demonstrated in the mid-nineteenth century. New ways of seeing and portraying the
seascape arose in the 1840s that superseded the picturesque image of Russia. By the
end of that decade, the new imagery would amount to the creation of an entirely
unprecedented aesthetic sense of Russia’s unique terrain.
We have almost the whole spectrum of emotions in this one painter: Romantic
grief, chauvinistic pride, deep wonder, tingling expectation, pleasure, the enjoyment
of recognition, and, above all, curiosity. How did these emotions inevitably overtake
the artist peculiar to Russianness? Aivazovsky was his own man with all his early
European influences. Nobody painted the sea like him, and while this subject was
famous outside Russia, he overshadowed everyone else and made it his own.76
75 The Russian Geographical Society saw in the works of Aivazovsky not only high artistic merit but,
at the same time, recognized their great educational value. This was reflected in the speech of the
vice-chairman of the society, P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, at a meeting at the Academy of Arts on
the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the creative activity of I. K. Aivazovsky. Also, importantly, the
sea was the Black Sea, known as Russian in Russian chronicles since the 12th century.
76 Victoria Charles, Ivan Aivazovsky and the Russian Painters of Water (New York: Parkstone
International, 2018), Kindle.
49
Prior to his departure for Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas I had Aivazovsky paint
images of various Russian seaports. View of Odessa on a Moonlit Night [figure 7] was
completed in Crimea in 1846 and first exhibited in Odessa. In July 1846, the tsar
commandeered four of Aivazovsky’s pictures, including View of Odessa, “taken from
the extremity of the practical wharf,” for the Imperial Hermitage collection. The
newspaper Одесский Вестник [Odessa Bulletin] wrote: “The longer one stands in
front of Aivazovsky’s View of Odessa, the more it enchants the eye. The sea has so
much life and movement, and the light on the ripples is so natural. One is amazed at
the artist’s ability to capture and convey the charm of the southern moonlit night with
such inimitable verity.”77 Aivazovsky often painted nocturnal views in the late 1840s.
View of Odessa on a Moonlit Night appears to depict the Black Sea coast near
Feodosia. The artist’s masterful ability to convey the effects of the moonlight on the
clouds and its pastoso path on the water delighted both art critics and visitors, who
flocked to his exhibitions in St. Petersburg, Feodosia, Odessa, and Moscow.
Upon his return from Europe, Aivazovsky stopped in the Crimea, his
hometown, where he painted scenes that he recalled from his recent sailings and views
of the coastal settlements and panorama along the Black Sea. Moonlit Night on the
Seashore [figure 8], Sunset at the Crimean Shores [figure 9], View in Oreanda [figure
10], and Moonlit Night in the Crimea [figure 11] provide magnificent panoramic
views and wonderful phenomena, which was a part of his mission as an artist. For
example, Moonlit Night in the Crimea shows an unusual presence of poeticized
modern building prosaic by the light of a country dacha on the shoreline surrounded
by a garden near Alushta alongside the more usual motifs of the sea with sailing vessels
77 “Exhibition of Ivan K. Aivazovsky in Feodosia,” Одесский Вестник [Odessa Bulletin], no. 49-50,
19-22 January 1846.
50
and the mass of Ayu-Dag in the distance. In this respect, I would like to discuss the
term “homesickness.” Particularly at the beginning of the 1860s, Russian landscape
painting was moving in a new direction, with an increasing insistence by many
landscape students that they be allowed to complete their studies at home in Russia
rather than going abroad.78 Although he accepted going abroad, the remaining part of
Aivazovsky’s life was dedicated to Crimean geography. He was a tireless traveler, and
his journeys were driven by a thirst for knowledge. However, he described these
voyages as being “like a bee I suck honey from the flower garden to bring in grateful
tribute to the Tsar and to Mother Russia.”79 As soon as his first European voyage was
over, he immediately returned to Feodosia, where he always longed to be, as he wrote:
I happily spend my winters in St. Petersburg; I work, I have a good time, I share
my leisure with my good friends, but as soon as it begins to feel like a spring, I feel
homesick - I yearn to be in Crimea, by the Black Sea […] It is my soul’s desire; if you
will, it is what my very being demands. Many a time His Majesty the late Emperor
would kindly warn me against it. Once he said, “You will get lazy there, doing
nothing.” In response, I assured him that I would continue working hard while I was
in the South; the Emperor answered, smiling, “Then again, you can live where you
like, just keep painting, don’t be lazy. You are like that wolf in the proverb: no matter
how much you feed him, he still runs for the forest.80
So, accepting the fact that regarding Aivazovsky as being homesick may be
open for discussion, it is, nonetheless, obvious that he loved his native land and he
used every opportunity to go there and to live inside the Crimean geography.
Throughout the Crimean Coasts series, the images are invariably defined by evidence
78 In 1858, Mikhail Klodt was awarded a gold medal at the Academy. The award carried the regular
corresponding scholarship for three years to study abroad. But, two years into his European visit, he
requested the Academy allow him to return home early “in order to occupy the remaining period of
the pension painting views from nature in Russia.” Klodt was allowed to return and to work painting
and sketching landscapes in different areas of his native country for the next two years. Also, the
landscape painter Pyotr Sukhodolskii, after winning his own gold medal in 1864, received permission
from the Academy to spend his entire three years of study in Russia. Similarly, Vladimir Orlovskii,
after winning the gold medal in 1868, requested to be allowed to study in his own native Ukraine for
at least a year before going to Europe. Ely, This Meager Nature, 174.
79 Русская Старина [Russian Antiquity], 1878, vol. 22, July, p. 246. Also see: Galina Churak, “An
Artist of Hellenic Spirit,” The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 4, no. 53 (2016), 30.
80 Русская Старина [Russian Antiquity], 1878, vol. 22, issues 5-8, p. 443.
51
of the weather—most often in the form of scudding clouds being driven across the sky,
and the beautiful representations of sunrise, daytime, and moonlight, and the
contrasting weather conditions could be read as contemporary Russian “times of the
day.”
Crimea was not only a key to the developing Russian imperial vision, therefore,
but also meditation on Aivazovsky’s own destiny. Thus, it expresses a personal
negotiation of national and imperial as well as regional identities. In the modern era of
the birth of nations, the cultural upheaval produced a constant flux of profound
emotions revealed through “culture,” the social production of creativity in the form of
artifacts. Historical forces were thus reproduced to reflect this sense of a constantly
change set against the mere appearance of permanence.81 Modernity as progress and
the establishment of nation in nineteenth-century Russia was certainly expressed from
the start of the new century. Notably, the works of Sergei Uvarov’s (1786-1855)
professed a doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.82 Standing as
conservative bulwark to the onward rush, this key contribution to a specifically
Russian character captured the nation through an intimate combination of its political
philosophy, religion, and language and their setting in the land.
As regards the Crimean example, peoples and cultures, ideas and languages,
and land and seascapes of the region were all gathered and molded to fashion a novel
sense of place and citizen consciousness; thence, the new Russia, the modern
81 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 6-7; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 3-6.
82 Uvarov’s doctrine, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality was designed to oppose the 1830s
revolutionary and liberal movements, which were influential in Europe. “Orthodoxy” represents the
opposite view to the French Revolutionary idea of secularism in a very clear way. “Autocracy” ended
political ambiguity. As Uvarov emphasized, autocracy constituted a base for Russian political thought.
The third element, “nationality,” represents the ethnic solidarity even though the translation from the
Russian word Narodnost is very difficult. For more information, see Catherine Evtuhov and Richard
Stites, A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 204),
47-50.
52
Russian.83 Indeed like any becoming nation and nationality, the ingredients of this
Russia and these Russians were added over time according to circumstance and
combined with the narratives trouvé, a coherence conceived among the varied folk
stories and territories claimed for incorporation. The changing image of the Crimean
region, from Catherine’s heavenly backyard to a place still very beautiful but
geographically a very important intersection point, demonstrates also the shifting
meanings of Russianness itself, and Aivazovsky’s lifetime occupation with the
seascape of Crimea is key to understanding this transformation.
Catherine the Great and the Paradise Myth
Compelled by the worsening Crimean situation, Catherine the Great signed the
declaration “On the Annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the Island Taman and the
Entire Kuban Province under Russian Rule.” Thus, Crimea became one of the most
important representative political experiments. Situated on the southern outskirts of
the Russian Empire, where it could improve Russia’s access to the Black Sea and the
Mediterranean—and blessed with good harbors, fertile valleys, and a largely mild
environment—Crimea enjoyed a long history of international trade through the Silk
Road via Feodosia, a very much ethnic and cultural entrepôt. Crimea existed during
the final century of the Russian ancien régime as a key division along the expanded
imperial borderland.84 While under the direct rule of Russia, the area became a
common haven for travelers and merchants, many of whom were wealthy, noble, and
royal. So, for many, Crimea was a land of hope, a possible paradise.
83 For a general view on national identity in Russian culture, see Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis,
eds., National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004).
84 Edward J. Lazzerini, “Local Accommodation and Resistance to Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century
Crimea,” in Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917, ed. Daniel R. Brower
and Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 172.
53
The paradise trope had a rich background in Russian culture. In a book
dedicated to the “paradise myth” of the eighteenth century, Stephen Baehr showed
how representations of this heavenly realm frequently invoked the political in the
propaganda service of the state, its ruler, or a dignitary. The central idea of this paradise
drew a kind of composite image derived from various sources, referencing the Golden
Age of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for example, and the biblical Garden of Eden,85 and in
Catherine’s time, the Russian Eden served as a central literary cliché.86 Potemkin’s
reference to paradise quoted above (footnote 37) should also be seen in this context,
insofar as he “proposed to realize the metaphor, to embody into imperial political
practice a trope that runs through the literary glorification of Catherine II.”87
Catherine appears to have started to think of the province as a sort of garden
after Crimea was annexed; I suggest that she did so to support Crimean association
with the Garden of Eden.88 Andrei Zorin reviews the evidence for Catherine’s desire
for Crimea in his article on the region’s position in Russia’s national identity.89
Assuming, thus, that the Empress conceived Crimea as an idealized selfrepresentation,
I shall try to establish a link between her sea- and landscape design and
political philosophy with her successors’ treatment of this “colonized” region and the
surrounding discourses.90 Aivazovsky’s Crimean paintings, both those commissioned
85 Stephen Lessing Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in
Early Secular Russian Literature and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 1-3;
171-174; Andreas Schönle, The Ruler in the Garden: Politics and Landscape Design in Imperial
Russia (Bern: Peter Lang Ag, International Academic Publishers, 2007), 77.
86 Baehr, The Paradise Myth, 65-68.
87 Schönle, The Ruler in the Garden, 78.
88 Ibid.
89 Andrei Zorin, “Крым в истории русского самосознания” [Crimea in the History of Russian
Identity], Новое Литературное Обозрение [New Literature Review], no. 31 (1998), 135-137.
Catherine’s concern for aesthetic and semiotic value of landscape design and her penchant for
incorporating gardens into politics have both been known. For this, see: Dmitrii O. Shvidkovskii, The
Empress and the Architect: British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 41-42; 102-105.
90 Schönle, The Ruler in the Garden, 79.
54
and those painted by his own choice, present Crimea as a paradise, resting on the
bounteous climatic properties of the region.
Aivazovsky painted Arrival of Catherine II in Feodosia [figure 12] for the
100th anniversary of the Crimean annexation of the Russian Empire. Instead of being
a successful conqueror, Peter the Great was unable to reach the Black Sea but,
undergoing long wars with the Ottoman Empire, Catherine the Great obtained the right
of passage and achieved sovereignty over the Black Sea. The artist presented the
empress and her suite against the panorama of the town, Feodosia. The biggest part of
the canvas takes in the bay with the soft waves glittering under sunlight. Despite being
rich in natural resources and blessed by its geographical location, the Crimean
Peninsula was described as poor and backward under Ottoman rule. But Russia
changed this: “In its forward movement to the south, to its natural borders, reclaiming
the right to its ancient property, to the age-old Russian [Black] Sea, it [Russia] took
possession of Crimea and restored to it the ancient time of enlightenment and peace
[…] In Crimea arrived the happiest of days […]”91
The Crimean annexation process reveals major questions around Russia’s
imperial identity, the meaning of Russia, its land, and how they were changing. These
questions find possible answers throughout the career of Aivazovsky. Aivazovsky saw
Crimea as his homeland and a unique, organic part of the empire. Also, Russia’s
Crimean policies and experiences on the peninsula both encapsulated and affected the
shifts ongoing in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the self-identity of heartlands. To
put it somewhat convincingly: to note that an image of a sea-based empire is imagined
is not to dismiss it as imaginary. Rather, this picturesquely fabricated notions of
Russia’s maritima identity – as depicted in Aivazovsky’s paintings – take on the bits
91 A. Ivanov, Столетие Присоединения Крыма К России [Centenary of Crimea Joining Russia]
(1883), quoted in Edward J. Lazzerini “Local Accommodation and Resistance to Colonialism,” 174.
55
and pieces, which may or may not be complete, but which are nevertheless integral to
formation-like. Thus, the affective meaning of the annexation of Crimea during the
reign of Catherine II was still lively a hundred years later, and it had a celebratory
meaning for a native Crimean painter. It is also worth mentioning that this painting
was not an official commission: Aivazovsky himself chose to depict this historical
moment because he was always proud of being part of a Crimea that was a part of the
Great Russian Empire. As a notable person of Feodosia, he was very much interested
in the social and economic life of the city. In a letter written to the Chairman of the
Engineering Council of the Ministry of Railways, V. Vasilievich, he suggested
building a new port at Feodosia instead of Sevastopol. He wrote:
Recently, a true rumor has apparently spread that they finally decided not to
build a commercial port in Sevastopol and, as a result, Feodosia was chosen for
commerce. I do not know how fair this is, in any case this winter has proved the
advantages of Theodosius. Firstly, the colds were severe, up to 15 and 16 degrees, and
our port did not freeze at all, although Sevastopol did not freeze either, but there were
many ships from under Sevastopol in Feodosia, they were saved from terrible storms,
during which ships could not enter to the Sevastopol Bay, and the tightness of the
Sevastopol Bay was also very clearly defined […] You have repeatedly expressed your
opinion favorable to our Feodosia, finally complete it. I don’t know how the new
minister will relate to Feodosia, but I ask you to humbly inform him of this fact on
occasion.92
Biographers of the artist indicate that Aivazovsky uses the same view, the
panoramic view of the city, as a backdrop for his seascapes. This Catherine painting is
again occupied by the image of Feodosia Bay, a city lying within a ring of ancient
walls with waves lapping widely on the shore. However, these biographers missed one
important point: the year 1883 was also the 100th anniversary of Catherine II’s
annexation of Crimea. These two events (the centennial anniversary and the official
request letter) lead directly to a two-pronged evaluation that strikes me as central to
our understanding of the depictions of the Crimean region in Aivazovsky’s career: the
92 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to V. Vasilievich, February 10, 1893, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian
and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 188-189.
56
representation of Crimea (both geographically and also militarily) illuminates the
promotion of visual strategies of Russian rulers and how the arrival of Catherine II as
a symbol of the cities taken by the Russians played an essential role in the defining
and forming of national identity.
Illustrating the Grandeur Realistically: The Black Sea
“The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters …
This is one of the most majestic paintings I know.”93
In 1881, Aivazovsky painted one of his main works, full of greatness and
strength: Black Sea [figure 13]. Externally, Black Sea is so simple that it cannot be
described; yet, at the same time, it is one of Aivazovsky’s most expressive paintings.
Aivazovsky himself, of course, was well aware of the significance of this work; hence,
one must think, the simple but effective name of the painting, Black Sea, came about.
Initially, it had a different name: “A storm begins to play out on the Black Sea.”94 But
this did not satisfy Aivazovsky since it spoke only about the external state of nature.
He felt that, with this work, he was achieving something more than mere marine
depictions. Here, he managed to create a synthetic image of the Black Sea, including
many of its distinctive features: the sea is depicted on a gray, windy day; the sky is
covered with clouds; the entire foreground of the picture is filled with waves
approaching from the horizon, which move, ridge after ridge, and, through their
alternation, create a special rhythm and a stately structure to the whole picture.
Through this painting, Aivazovsky transformed the watery images into a new personal
vision of seascapes. This notable large-scale work demonstrates the inner world of the
93 In response to Aivazovsky’s tremendous painting Black Sea when it was exhibited, the painter and
art critic Ivan Kramskoi quoted from the Bible: “This is the greatest sea I have ever seen.” Aleksey
Suvorin, ed., Иван Николаевич Крамской: Его жизнь, переписка и художественно-критическиe
статьи. 1837-1887 [Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi: His Life, Correspondences and Critical Art
Reviews. 1837-1887] (Saint-Petersburg, 1888), 681-682.
94 Barsamov, Ivan Aivazovsky, 110-112.
57
artist depicting his native maritime borders. The attempt to paint a deep ocean
wilderness was, it seems to me, his most radical departure. Aivazovsky was
constrained to paint seascapes in new ways because of the new space he confronted.
In 1881, Aivazovsky exhibited Black Sea at the Moscow Exhibition. Its
audience was both startled and mystified. The painting was strikingly modern. Its
reductive pictoriality and yet ambiguous meaning produced a disquieting sentiment. It
also announced what would become a seal of this painter’s art: the subject of the small,
isolated sailboat as a reflection on the relationship between the individual and the
environment and thus between humanity and the natural world. As compared to the
canvases filled with simple, harmonious romanticism, a painting had been produced
in which the devotion of young people seems forgotten, where any outward
flamboyancy was evident only in the artistic life of the sea.
Aivazovsky addressed the Black Sea to examine the eternity of existence, with
the majestically respiring ocean viewed as a symbol of human life and its destiny.95
The landscape before our eyes presents the thick, vast expanses of the Black Sea. The
composition is separated into two equal parts, the upper half the sky, the lower half the
sea. They as contrasting reflections about the line of the horizon. We see clouds in the
sky, which darken closer to the right side of the canvas, transforming into a storm.
Looking deeply into the picture, we see just underneath the clouds, nearer to
the left of the screen, from afar, a blurry, scarcely visible shape, barely distinguishable
as a vague figure close to the coastline, reminding us of a solitary sailing boat. The
sea-green shades swell disturbingly, while the sky contains hues of yellow, milkywhite,
dark pink, brown, turquoise, violet, and even gray-blue. The clouds are driving
with the bad weather, revealing a clear space in the sky, and turning the abyss of water
95 Churak, “An Artist of Hellenic Spirit,” 25-26.
58
into something magnificent. The lower portion of the wedge of cloud curls like a
tornado to the west, while the upper part expands more gently toward the middle of
the image. The distance between thunder and cumulus, therefore, creates a luminescent
space over the distant detail of the boat. In the Black Sea, the depth of boats and human
beings (the only ship on the horizon) is unmediated. The remarkable achievement of
the painting is to deny us the distance that those mediators frequently allow for. Rather,
we are on the water, the feeling of activity around us overwhelming.
Aivazovsky’s connection with Crimea was vividly reflected in his work,
through what he loved most, and what he most often portrayed—the Black Sea. He
was, in fact, the first painter to show the Black Sea as a Crimean landscape rather than
as a specific picture. He also conveyed the power of the sea as well as the majesty and
vastness of the sea and the steppe expanses.
Although descriptive of the natural world, Aivazovsky’s seascapes also go
beyond a simple materiality of nature, treating their topographic features as a
transcendent immanence. Their greater significance, however, resides in the wider
cultural import of the Black Sea to nineteenth-century Russia, in which respect it
provided a mythical source of pragmatic potential for an ideological cohesion in the
maritime nation. In one sense, it served as the semi-divine, umbilical-type linkage
between Russian’s innate insularity and global aspiration, and in another, it provided
a symbolic site of contemporary debates about art, its history, and theory. In this
painting, the realistic aspects of the art of Aivazovsky were uncovered with
unprecedented fullness. This allowed him to create a generalized image of the
formidable sea elements, without invoking either pathetic dramatization of the plot, or
too light or too colorful effects. This picture was then acquired by P. M. Tretyakov96
96 Pavel M. Tretyakov was a Russian businessman, a supporter of the fine arts, and a wealthy collector
who bequeathed the Tretyakov Gallery in his hometown of Moscow. For recent information about
59
(1832-1898), and it deeply agitated artistic circles as the aging artist had managed to
create a work that became another milestone on the path of a new (unexpectedly, for
many) rise of his talent in the development of Russian realistic painting.97
Conclusion
Arranged chronologically, this chapter focuses on the interaction between
individuals, places, and ideas involved not only in building not just a modern maritime
empire on the Crimean Peninsula but also in constructing a new Russian identity as
both empire and nation. During the nineteenth century, the new Russian landscape and
seascape imagery had been definitively established and accepted as a signifier of
nationality in literature and painting. At the same time, the notion that Russia’s
land/seascape had had a formative impact on the consciousness of Russian individuals
transcended the boundaries of art criticism and appeared in new spheres of thought.
Russia’s preeminent historian of the late nineteenth century, Vasily Kliuchevsky, felt
comfortable making unsubstantiated assertions about the effect of the land on the
individuals:
The forest, the steppe, and the river - these, one might say, are the
fundamental elements of Russian nature in its historical significance. All of
them and each separately by itself have taken lively and original part in the
construction of the life and ideas of the Russian individual.98
Pavel Tretyakov and his family, see: S. P. Botkina, Павел Михайлович Третьяков Жизнь В
Искусстве [Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov: Life in Art] (Moscow: The Tretyakov Gallery, 2012);
Ziloti, In the House of Tretyakov, and for the correspondences of Pavel Tretyakov with artists,
including Aivazovsky, see: Письма Художников Павлу Михайловичу Третьякову: 1856-1879
[Letters of Artist to Pavel Tretyakov: 1856-1879] (Moscow, 1960).
97 It is difficult to think about Aivazovsky’s art without the izms of art history. However, although he
was always labeled under the romantic category, the Black Sea was a turning point in his artistic
career. I assert that we should consider Aivazovsky as a realist painter; to comprehend these kinds of
patterns, it is easy to understand and make stronger analyses on both his artistic career and the
significant role the Black Sea played in Russian history.
98 V. O. Kliuchevsky, Сочинения: Курс Русской Истории [Compositions: A Course on Russian
History] (Moscow, 1956), 66.
60
Thus, the once self-effacing indigenous lands had become transformed as a
symbol of pride in Russia, in its national character and its culture. The place of the
insecure steppe in Russian government policies during the reigns of Ivan the Terrible
and Peter the Great is hard to overemphasize. Indeed, it played a significant role in the
transition from principality to strong monarchy, from Muscovy to modern Russian
Empire.99 Similarly, in the transformation of a land-based to a sea-based empire, and
later maritime nation, the role of the sea, particularly the Black Sea, played a crucial
role both geographically and ideologically.
Crimea was celebrated as “the garden of the empire” for poets and tsarist
propagandists, and as the century progressed, the garden flourished.100 The Crimean
region had a more complicated identity and played an ambiguous role in Russian
conceptions of the native terrain. It was considered foreign at times and national at
others. Apart from any consideration of the Crimean landscape and national identity,
the geography of the Crimean Peninsula made an extremely important contribution to
the history of what would come to be generally understood as the Great Russian
landscape. Images and descriptions of Crimean sea and landscapes were extremely
involved in the imagination of Russian national space. Neal Ascherson wrote that the
Black Sea coast belonged “to all their people, but also to none of them …” Crimea has
long been a historically precious and disputed region, a location with a non-permanent
ethnic center, a regional obsession for Russians, Ukrainians, Turks, and Tatars.101
As this dissertation shows, even individual identity is an open and evolving
subject. As a kind of collective fiction, national identities are always multiple and
99 For more information see: Katia Dianina, When Art Makes News: Writing Culture and Identity in
Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013).
100 King, The Black Sea, 202.
101 Konstantin Plesakov, The Crimean Nexus: Putin’s War and the Clash of Civilizations (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 6.
61
always open to redefinition. Only with reference to culture is national identity viewed
as an example of how culture defines people and influences who they are. Thus, the
relationship between geographical territory and national identity is open to
interpretation, and Crimea helped shape the image of the Russian Empire’s landscape
as it came into being in the nineteenth century. Without doubt, Ivan K. Aivazovsky
was key to completing this transformation, capturing, as he did, the monumental
essence of tempestuous seas, the waves battering against the ancient cliffs, and the
wild waters lapping against the primeval coastlines now, finally, being brought under
the restraining sway of civilization, which was Russian.
62
CHAPTER 2
Historical Vision and the Representation of History in Aivazovsky’s Battle
Paintings
Introduction
Although the great inland waters and seas of the Russian Empire have always
influenced its history, the systematic and policy-driven development of naval
expertise, and hence a maritime heritage, dates from the reign of Peter I (r. 1682–
1725).102 The tsar desired, above all else, to pursue the twin ambitions of centralizing
and modernizing the government of Russia and expanding his domain into North-
Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Among all the challenges presented by such an
ambitious policy, those related to the sea were invariably of primary importance. In
his desire to take Russia into Europe, he was confronted by the resistance of Sweden,
an already well-established maritime power, which saw the Baltic as a Swedish lake,
while Russian expansion to the southeast would be at the expense of the Ottoman
Empire.103 The Russian Empire had always aspired and fought hard for a secure and
102 For a history of the Russian Navy, see: Eric Morris, The Russian Navy: Myth and Reality (New
York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1977); Anthony J. Watts, The Imperial Russian Navy (London: Arms
and Armour Press, 1990) and as primary sources for the rise of Russia as a maritime empire, see:
Baron George Sydenham Clarke, Russia’s Sea-Power, Past and Present or The Rise of the Russian
Navy (London: John Murray, 1898); Fred T. Jane, Imperial Russian Navy: Its Past, Present, and
Future (London: Thacker & Co, 1899); for a general history of Peter I, see: Paul Bushkovich, Peter
the Great: The Struggle for Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); James Cracraft,
The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2003); Lindsey
Hughes, Russia in the Age of the Peter the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Marc
Raeff, ed., Peter the Great Changes Russia (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972); Richard S. Wortman,
Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1, From Peter the Great to the
Death of Nicholas I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
103 For a general history of the Russian Empire, see: Gregory L. Freeze, ed., Russia: A History (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997); William Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia 1600-1914
(New York: Free Press, 1992; Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and Russians; Lindsay Hughes, The
Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917 (London: Humbledon Continuum, 2008); Andreas Kappeler,
The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (New York: Longman, 2001); John Keep, Soldiers of the
Tsar: Army and Society in Russia 1462-1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Boris Mironov and
Ben Eklof, The Social History of Imperial Russia 1700-1917 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000);
Marc Raeff, Imperial Russia 1682-1825: The Coming Age of Modern Russia (New York: Knopf,
1971); Marc Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984);
Thomas Sanders, ed., Historiography of Imperial Russia: The Profession and Writing of History in a
63
easy access to “warm” waters, which meant the Mediterranean since the North Sea and
the Baltic Sea were too disconnected from the Mediterranean world. The Black Sea
was thus one of the natural bodies of water that provided important access and
influence. The various conflicts and wars between the Russians and the Ottomans are
testimony to this Russian fact.
Indeed, for most of Aivazovsky’s life, the Russian Empire was embroiled in
war against the Ottoman Empire, and thus the impact of the conflict on the life of the
nation, on land and sea, was a major theme in his works. Starting from the middle of
the nineteenth century, Aivazovsky was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I (r. 1825–
1855) and Alexander II (1855–1881) to depict major Russo–Ottoman naval battles.
Treating the naval battles inclusively both within Aivazovsky’s works and within our
understanding of nineteenth-century history and visual culture, in general, will allow
us to properly begin to understand the visualization of the “intersected territories” of
both the Russian and the Ottoman empires through the eyes of Aivazovsky.
Battle painting104 was an established and a distinct branch of marine art, and
the extended period of conflict represented by the Russo–Ottoman wars of the
nineteenth century (1827–29, 1853–56, 1877–78) was to feature very often in
Aivazovsky’s oeuvre. Within the mix of tragedy and glory are the burning enemy
Multinational State (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999); Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State and Society on
the Black Sea Steppe (New York: Routledge, 2007).
104 The nineteenth century was a significant period for the reinvention of history painting and the reappearance
of battle scenes as a military subgenre of history painting. Although the neoclassical style
articulated historical subjects successfully in the late eighteenth century, evolving audiences, attitudes,
and perceptions demanded new approaches in the nineteenth century, which also saw the emergence
of a race toward historical consciousness, embodied in all corners of European civilization. There was
a real break, a true transformation in historical consciousness, and this break is also related to
Romanticism. Historians of the Romantic era turned to history as a narrative that could present and
recreate the past. At a time when the whole range of contemporary concerns with the past first became
accessible to representation, this historical consciousness of the Romantic period thus initiated a new
genre of history painting that would flourish in France, particularly during the Napoleonic period, and
would continue into the nineteenth century in other parts of Europe. The way in which history was
depicted was an attempt to create an illusion of visual heroics; but further, the past began to be
appropriated for political purposes to reinforce the cultural and political myths of the moment.
Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne, 1995), 5.
64
ships, representing victory; Aivazovsky’s paintings fitted all the requirements for the
creation of modern, national history painting. Aivazovsky’s paintings served a double
purpose here: on the one hand, they sought openly to repeat a highly successful
pictorial strategy, adapting the formal academic demands of history painting to a
modern, national iconography; on the other, they also advertised the artist’s own
esteemed reputation in the shadows of the exploded ships, referring to the rise of
Russia as a marine empire and a dominant figure in the Black Sea. The idea of Russian
art as a battleground had a lineage going back at least Jacob Philipp Hackert’s Chesme
series. However, whereas the contest in Hackert’s series is between his own German
art and that of the imperial commission of Catherine II, by the mid-nineteenth century,
the scramble for artists with Russian Academy of Fine Arts backgrounds to respond as
quickly as possible to latest events of the war indicates that Russian artists’ battles
engaged their patriotic feelings, which reached a peak during the reign of Nicholas I.
Thus, Aivazovsky’s prideful self-referencing of Russian naval victories—primarily
against the Ottoman Empire, giving dominance over the Black Sea—also shows a deep
awareness of the commercial potential of the subject, which is demonstrated in the
increasing official commissions by the rulers and the accompanying exhibitions of
these paintings organized by Aivazovsky himself.105 This exhibition contributed to
feeding a consumer-driven imperial circle and a public appetite for memorabilia and
lively representations of the Russian great naval victories, generally accepted to have
been one of the cornerstones of Russian imperial history.106
105 By September 1854, Aivazovsky had moved, with all his family, to Kharkov in southern Ukraine.
He stayed there for exactly a year; while there, he received grand dukes Nikolai and Mikhail
Nikolaievich, two of Nicholas I’s sons, who were on their way to St. Petersburg from the war zone.
He gave them a number of drawings he had made while he was in Sevastopol. On their way back, the
grand dukes again stopped in Kharkov in order to thank Aivazovsky on behalf of their father. They
also communicated the emperor’s words: Whatever Aivazovsky paints, I will buy. Caffiero and
Samarine, Light, Water and Sky, 46.
106 Although nineteenth-century Russo–Ottoman wars have a great importance in the imperial policies
both politically and sociologically, Russian history has accepted two wars as “patriotic wars.” The
65
If the depiction of actual battle scenes was of limited artistic interest, then, in
contrast, Aivazovsky’s engagement with the major Russian naval attacks in the Black
Sea in particular, and the navy more generally, were wide-ranging and profound. It
was a subject that he returned to repeatedly in exhibited paintings, and in designs for
numerous print projects. A great place in the artist’s work is occupied by victories of
the Russian fleet that occurred during his lifetime. He had opportunities to talk with
participants of the sea battles, even to visit the battlefields. Aivazovsky’s deep interest
in Russian naval history throughout his entire life was vital in establishing and then
augmenting his creative consciousness. Once appointed as a Russian navy painter in
1844, he both accomplished court and military commissions and gave himself to his
personal emotional attachment to Russia.107 He sought to immortalize initiatives and
achievements, following his true interests in and ability to reflect Russian maritime
culture.108
This chapter presents his naval battle paintings as powerful and important
documents of Russian artistic and imperial patriotic engagement with the figure of the
“victorious” Russian navy in the Black Sea.109 My reductant interest concerns the
first one is the Russo–French War of 1812, the heroic defense against Napoleon Bonaparte, and the
second was the Second World War, again an epic resistance against the Fascist regime of the Nazis.
Except of the Crimean War, all of nineteenth-century Russo–Ottoman wars ended with Russian
victories. Despite, during the Battle of Sinop, the Russians defeating the Ottoman fleet, the
intervention of France and Britain into the war on behalf of the Ottomans (because of their concern for
maintaining the neutrality of the Straits and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire) transformed the
Crimea, which had erupted from a Russo–Ottoman war into a European war. Thus, the defense of
Sevastopol, as in the case of the so-called patriotic wars, became very significant in the historical
narration of the Russian Empire. For further information about the Crimean War and the Ottoman
official discourse, see: Fatma Özyiğit Coşkuner, Ottoman Official Discourse and its Reflections
during the Crimean War, unpublished MA thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2010; Candan Badem, Kırım
Savaşı ve Osmanlılar (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2012).
107 In 1844, he was awarded the title of official artist at the Russian Naval Headquarters, with the right
to wear the uniform of the Russian Naval Ministry. Russian State Naval Archives, no. 3712, 16
September, 1844. [РГА ВМФ - Российский государственный архив военно-морского флота]
108 Churak, “An Artist of Hellenic Spirit,” 31.
109 Nineteenth-century “naval patriotism” was not simply a reflection of naval success and
commemoration of its officer heroes, past and present; rather, as a hierarchical community, the navy
had become an influential allegory for the Russian Empire and a focus for debate around issues
concerning the land-based versus sea-based empire.
66
visual representation of maritime Russia in the nineteenth century through the
observations of Aivazovsky. In analyzing Aivazovsky’s responses to the Russo–
Ottoman wars, it is important to understand the broader context of Russian wartime
and post-war patriotism, as well as its associated “culture of victory against the
Ottomans,”110 at a time when the navy had achieved a unique position within Russian
culture (dominance of the Black Sea) more widely. As Charles King describes, the
nineteenth century witnessed the division of the Black Sea between “the waxing and
waning powers of Eastern Europe, the Russians and the Ottomans, a waterway on
which two sets of imperial ambitions came into intimate contact.”111 Indeed, from the
late-eighteenth century onward, “naval patriotism” was not simply a reflection of
Russian naval success. Rather, as a hierarchical yet relatively meritocratic community,
the navy had become a potent metaphor and idealized picture for Russian society, and
a focus for Aivazovsky’s responses, his “national identity.” The depictions of Russian
naval victories can be defined as a mutable space between the history of the empire
and the history of a nation, an arena that becomes invested with layers of cultural,
historical, and national meanings. I will explore ways in which naval patriotism was
imagined, represented, appropriated, and transformed in the world of the nineteenthcentury
Crimean artist and, in the process, contributed to the formation of cultural,
national, and political identities. The symbols of naval patriotism were its victories,
ships, commanders, and sailors, expressed in Aivazovsky’s works throughout the
nineteenth century. The sea captured in the cultural and literal frame of painting
intersected closely, I argue, with the historical discourse of the emerging maritime
identity of the Russian Empire, with the Black Sea as its most prominent figure.
110 Erin McBurney, “Art and Power in the Reign of Catherine the Great: The State Portraits” (Ph.D.
diss., Columbia University, 2014), 282.
111 King, The Black Sea, 139.
67
Further, that this intersection between visual and historical discourse mirrored and
articulated the relationship between empire and nation, which was far from being
monolithically stable, but instead fluid, contested, and conflicted, much like the
seas/oceans through which that relationship was materialized.112
A striking aspect of the relationship between nation and empire in this period
as personified in Aivazovsky’s battle paintings is presented in the construction of the
sea, in terms of an irreconcilable self-contradiction that a problematic in the
relationship of “empire” to “nation.” The sea is treated simultaneously as both the
arterial access from the nation to the empire and also as a barrier that separates the
nation from the wider empire, and it maintains each’s distinctiveness. This is
particularly acute for the period in question, unlike earlier times, since the empire was
increasingly and exponentially an intense fact, a material practice, as well as an
ideological construct, that affected and determined increasing numbers of individual
lives both in Russia and its other lands, something that Aivazovsky’s paintings so
strikingly witness. In his case, rather than commercial enrichment, as in the case of
Great Britain, the sea is treated as a source of threat through possible invasion or
infection and, thus, always should be protected. This image of the sea for nineteenthcentury
Russia also explains the inherent tension in the discourse of naval battles, was
virtually synonymous with “the conquest of nature; the sea.”113 For the realization and
articulation of national identity, many a theorist of national identity identifies several
features of the nation-state. Principal among these is “an historic territory, or
homeland” in relation to which are generated “common myths and historical
112 Quilley, Empire to Nation, 3.
113 In her article, Ekaterina Pravilova examines the geopolitics of the Russian Empire to Central Asia
and the newly conquered Turkestan. She also analyzes how the policies on “water” would be used for
the conquest of nature and transformed to concentrate the centralized and highly complex
management system of irrigation. Ekaterina Pravilova, “River of Empire: Geopolitics, Irrigation, and
the Amu Derya in the Late XIXth Century,” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 17/18 (2009): 255–287.
68
memories” and a “common mass public culture.”114 In Aivazovsky’s descriptions of
naval battles against the Ottomans, the status of gaining hegemony on the Black Sea
is the “homeland”—the precondition for many aspects of nineteenth-century Russian
national character, by which the “very being” of the artist is defined by navigation and,
consequently, everything related to the Black Sea. This is an idea that buttresses the
common public culture, resulting in an imperial ideology dispensing the “mythical”
idea of Russia as a maritime empire. For Aivazovsky, to focus on the image of the sea
from seascapes to history painting, therefore, is also to implicate the myriad of routes
of cultural exchange and transculturation between the Russian Empire and the artist
himself.
The Russo-Ottoman War of 1768–1774
The Battle of Chios and Chesme
Of all naval engagements, it was the Battle of Chios and Chesme [Çeşme],
fought on 5–7 July 1770 against the Ottoman Empire, that defined the relationship
between the navy and the Russian Empire for the next hundred years. This was
primarily because of what the battle as a whole as represented: first, it was a decisive
and strategic victory that underlined Russia’s naval supremacy and signaled to the
Russian public the end of Ottoman domination of the Black Sea; second was the nature
and the conduct of battle itself, with its emphasis on total victory; third, the victory at
Chesme is also regarded as an inspiration for the Greek War of Independence;
114 From the early 1980s, Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, Anthony Smith, and others formed main
lines of debate around the origins and character of nations. In particular, see: Anderson, Imagined
Communities; Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition; Gellner, Nations and
Nationalism; Smith, “Ethnic Myths and Ethnic Revivals” and idem, National Identity
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991), 14. For further information, see footnote 58.
69
resistance to the Ottoman rule. Thus, Chesme came to signify a uniquely powerful
fusion of victory, inspiration, duty, and hegemony.115
Aivazovsky’s choice to depict this war was by no means unique. Petergof
Palace116 has a memorial hall devoted to the strengthening of Russia’s position on the
Black Sea. The hall became known as the Chesme Hall [figure 15] after the crucial
victory of the Russian fleet.117 In August 1778, work on the redesigning of the room
began in connection with its use for the twelve paintings by the German painter Jacob
Phillip Hackert (1737–1837), determining the subject matter and character of the
interior design. The paintings illustrate various episodes from the expedition of the
Russian fleet to the Archipelago—the islands of the Aegean Sea and the coastlands of
Anatolia and the Balkans. The expedition played a significant role in the course of the
Russo–Ottoman War of 1768–74.
Tsar Nicholas I commissioned Aivazovsky to depict this crucial victory of the
Russian fleet. In his letter to Count Alexander N. Mordvinov118, he wrote that “I spend
the whole winter depicting the battles ordered by His Majesty the Emperor to me. The
other day I finished the third and after that I will start writing stories of my choice.”119
115 For general information on the 1768–74 Russo–Ottoman War and the Battle of Chesme, see: Ali
Rıza İşipek and Oğuz Aydemir, 1770 Çeşme Deniz Savaşı: 1768-1774 Osmanlı Rus Savaşları
(Istanbul: Denizler Kitabevi, 2006).
116 In addition to urban palaces, the construction of country residences on the south shore of the Gulf
of Finland and in the forests to the southwest of the city was also encouraged by Peter the Great.
Peterhof was the most extensive of these projects. For more information, see: William Craft
Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004),
218-219.
117 The Chesme Hall, originally called the Anteroom, took shape in the middle of the eighteenth
century, during the reconstruction of the palace according to a project by Francesco Bartolomeo
Rastrelli. Located in the northwestern part of the building, it became an intermediary interior between
the Light Gallery (Ballroom), where all the arriving guests waited for a reception, and the Great Hall
(Throne Room) used for official receptions. The Chesme Hall, text by Olga Kislitsyna, trans. Valery
Fateyev (St. Petersburg: Abris Art Publishers, 2003).
118 Alexander Nikolayevich Mordvinov (1799–1858) was the son of a famous Russian admiral,
Nikolay Semyonovich Mordvinov (1754–1845). Although he did not receive systematic art education,
during a trip in Italy he made picturesque landscape sketches, which, on his return to St. Petersburg,
were embodied in the paintings.
https://arthive.com/artists/1423~Alexander_Nikolayevich_Mordvinov.
119 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to Count Alexander N. Mordvinov, February 4, 1848, transcript in
Sargsyan, Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 102. Also, in his monograph about
70
Although this statement shows, rather than his own choice, these naval battle paintings
were produced as a result of the tsar’s order, he decided to take advantage of having a
lucrative relationship with the imperial family. He did, after all, owe much of his
reputation to paintings depicting the Imperial Navy and the tsar’s feats.120 In later
years, in the article compiled by P. P. Karatygin, from stenographed recordings of
conversations with the painter, he indicated that “Every victory of our forces, whether
at sea or land, makes me happy as a Russian, and as an artist gives me the impulse to
paint it.”121 Perhaps the first stage of his career produced works by his own
“commission,” but in later years, Aivazovsky obviously chose to continue to depict
Russian victories as a result of both official commissions and his own need. It should
be noted that these battles signified the transformation of the Black Sea from Ottoman
territory to Russian dominance; in particular, the Crimean region that included
Feodosia, where the artist was born and spent many periods of his life, was the first
area among the huge Russian Empire to see, witness and hear “the winds of change.”
Aivazovsky’s naval paintings were helpful to propagandize the celebrations of
the might of the Russian navy. Yet, rather than to show the depiction of the battle itself
in all its detail, both topographically and strategically (as was expected from Hackert
in the previous century), utilizing diverse pictorial modes, Aivazovsky focused on
burning ships surrounded by a chaotic depiction of the sky within a broader, more
panoramic view of the action to create a novel pictorial middle ground between the
intimacy of the tragic battle scenes of contemporary history painting and the more
Aivazovsky, Minas Sargsyan indicates that Aivazovsky was commissioned by the emperor. Sargsyan,
The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 87–88.
120 Caffiero and Samarine, Light, Water and Sky, 41.
121 P. P. Karatygin, “Иван Айвазовский и его 42 года художественной деятельности 1838–81,”
[Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky and His 42 Years of Artistic Activity 1836–81] Русская
Старина [Russian Antiquity], 21, 22, 23, (1878) and 31 (1881).
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distant viewpoint conventional with naval battle painting, as practiced by Jacob Phillip
Hackert and others. In Battle of Chesme at Night [figure 16], Aivazovsky sought to
encapsulate the significance of Chesme, rather than create a more literal representation
of a particular moment in the battle, underlined by his incorporation of a number of
key events from across the action. The battle took place at night, and thus the battlefield
itself is illuminated by the fire of burning ships. The main focus of the painting is the
dramatic explosion of the Ottoman fleet. We might, therefore, assume that his
composition found some parallels with Hackert’s series of the same subject, exhibited
almost a century before. Over and above its enormous size, Hackert’s painting is
characterized by a number of compositional devices that are also notable in his other
paintings in the Chesme series: the ships of the line dominating the upper half of the
composition and, in the lower half, there are many sailors from both sides trying to
save themselves on one of the fragments. Aivazovsky’s composition broadly follows
this format. However, the paintings from the two different artists are markedly distinct.
Whereas Hackert’s composition encapsulates the kind of spectacular battle painting
popular in the 1790s by emphasizing the movement and dramatic confrontation
between two colossal ships, Aivazovsky’s paintings have a central, static emphasis
dominated by the destroyed image of the Ottoman fleet with a complex grouping of
Russian and Ottoman sailors in and around, positioned directly below.
The painting by Aivazovsky portrays a stunning and dark scene and
characterizes the talent of the artist’s unique method. In particular, he was admired for
being able to depict the reflection of the light on water accurately, and in this piece he
compares the moonlit waves in the forefront with the red water in the context in which
the boats are devoured by fire. The flames glitter on the surface of the water, giving
the painting almost a surreal quality as the spectator moves into the inferno. This
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painting is also characteristic of the artist’s ability to romanticize the dramatic reality
of fire-breaking ships by contrasting them with soft clouds, with a full moon (the moon
can be considered as Aivazovsky’s favorite feature, in complete harmony with his
Romantic spirit) peeking gently from the tops. The battle is very dark, and the moon
alone is drawn into the haze. The sky is colored in black. His reflection of the moon
reveals the tragic events that led to the death of many sailors. Aivazovsky’s other
painting in the Chesme series is Naval Battle at Chios [figure 17]. More or less, this
painting also followed a successful formation that presented daring colors, dramatic
contrasts of light and darkness, and other sublime effects. Both armadas are depicted
side by side. The Ottoman and Russian fleets both reached the Chios Channel and
expended their naval forces early in the morning. The two sides formed with their eyes
on each other. The battle ended in the waters of Chios. Russian and Turkish ships fired
at one another, dumping clouds of gunpowder—some in the air. Each Russian ship
closed on the Turkish fleet and fired just twenty meters away. The central location of
two ships from both sides demonstrates Aivazovsky’s ability to create an objective
historical moment, yet to deliver a dramatic effect.122
The Battle of Chesme became known as one of the proudest of all Russian
naval victories and the most devastating Ottoman defeat since the Battle of Lepanto,
as well as an inspiration for the Greek War of Independence and Greek freedom in
western Anatolia. Aivazovsky continued to essentialize the lucrative relationship
between the maritime and artistic spheres.
122 For more details about the battle, see: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/medieval/chesma1770-
humiliating-defeat-ottomans-russians.html.
73
The Battle of Navarino and the Russo-Ottoman War of 1828–29
“Azov” and “Mercury” as Representations of Russian Maritime Power
The Eastern Mediterranean was the scene for a joint venture between the navies of the
British and Russian empires, and once again, the enemy was the Ottoman Empire. The
Battle of Navarino123 (1827) was fought by naval contingents from Britain, France,
and Russia against the combined forces of Ottoman and Egyptian fleets. The victory
resulted in the destruction of the Ottoman ships, assuring the Greeks of independence
and leading the Ottoman sultan to acknowledge Russian supremacy in the Black Sea.
Although the Russian squadron was the last of the combined fleet to join the battle,
the Russians have always been proud of this victory. It is worth mentioning that, rather
than being a speculative venture, Aivazovsky’s painting of The Battle of Navarino
[figure 18] was again a royal commission.124 Thus we must conclude that the
representation was meant by the artist to be broadly celebratory. On the one hand,
Aivazovsky seems to have been engaging with the conventions and visual language of
marine art, in particular the ship portrait; on the other hand, if we accept that the ship
could represent the empire and that the Azov could itself symbolize an outcome of
national importance, then any representation of it could achieve significance beyond
mere ship portraiture to a contemporary audience.
123 Morris, Russian Navy, 7-8. For information on the Battle of Navarino from the Ottoman side (in
the Turkish literature, it is called “the Disaster of Navarino”), see: İdris Bostan, Osmanlılar ve Deniz:
Deniz Politikaları, Teşkilat, Gemiler (Istanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2010); Ersan Baş, ed., Çeşme,
Navarin, Sinop Baskınları ve Sonuçları (Istanbul: Piri Reis Araştırma Merkezi, 2007).
124 1846 was also year in which Aivazovsky painted his first large group of pictures on the history of
the Russian Navy, including Peter the Great at Krasnaya Gorka Lighting a Bonfire on the Shore to
Signal His Ships in Distress, Russian Museum, 1846). The painting depicts an episode from the
Russian emperor’s military campaign of 1710: Russian galleys and provision ships headed for Vyborg
were carried out to sea by a storm. Risking his life, Peter the Great and some sailors from his ship
came ashore at the fort of Krasnaya Gorka, where they lit a large bonfire as a beacon to show the ships
the way to safe harbor. This enormous canvas lauds the personal courage of Peter the Great in sailing
across the Gulf of Finland. Evgenia Petrova, ed., Ivan Aivazovsky: On the 200th Anniversary of the
Artist’s Birth (St. Petersburg: State Russian Museum, Palace Editions, 2016), 27.
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The Russian battleships sat in the center and thus suffered the main blow of the
Turkish–Egyptian forces, yet destroyed the bulk of the enemy fleet. The ship Azov,
under the command of Captain Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev, devastated them.125
Aivazovsky shows the flagship Azov badly damaged, but when the ship is boarded by
the crew of an Ottoman ship, the heroic Russian sailors cross to the Ottoman deck to
complete the destruction of the enemy ship. This episode is placed in the center of the
composition of the picture. By the very nature of the composition, through a
willingness to demonstrate the aggressive rush of the Azov and the Ottoman ship’s
doom, Aivazovsky does not doubt the outcome of the war. The Azov won the flag of
Saint George in memory of the praiseworthy deeds of the chiefs, of the courage and
fearlessness of the commanders, and of the bravery of the lower ranks; the whole world
praised the courage and skill of Russian sailors. The contemporary naval paintings of
Aivazovsky respected, more or less, the same procedure favoring vivid differences of
lightness and darkness with daring colors. The widespread popularity of these
paintings expressed a broader public interest in events surrounding the ongoing wars
with the Ottoman Empire. This painting seems to be the political and cultural backdrop
125 As the captain of the Azov, in 1827, the Russian fleet commander Lazarev (1788–1851) was
appointed Chief-of-Staff of the squadron tasked with a cruise in the Mediterranean. Renowned for his
larger-than-life personality, Captain Lazarev personally gave battle orders to the squadron ships and
took his ship to the center of the arched battle line in the Battle of Navarino, which was where the
Ottomans concentrated their leading thrust. The Azov was pit against five enemy ships at once, and all
were destroyed. The Azov received the highest award, the Ensign of St. George, and Lazarev was
promoted to the rank of rear admiral. D. V. Bugayev, 200 лет триумфа [200 Years of Triumph]
(Simferopol, 2017), 102-107. Admiral Mikhail Lazarev was also depicted by Aivazovsky. In 1839,
Aivazovsky observed the landing operations of the Russian Navy on the Caucasian shores. During the
operation at Fort Lazarev near Subashi [Subaşı], he made the acquaintance of Mikhail Lazarev,
commander of Silistria. Accepting the fact that this is not a “unique” portraiture in the history of art by
his insufficient technical details, Lazarev’s portrait was a fitting subject for the times following in the
tradition of the “the portraits of heroes” representing the famous commanders of the wars. This
portrait of the Russian admiral appears to have been painted on board the warship. Rather than
heroically depiction of the Admiral or representation of historical personas by the union of facts with
allegorical machinery, Aivazovsky choose to paint him truthfully by tending to exemplify Lazarev
emphasizing the individual resemblance. Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Portrait of Vice-Admiral Mikhail
Lazarev, 1839, oil on canvas, 47 x 49 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg.
75
for Aivazovsky’s post-war interpretation of the battle: the navy/empire emerges
triumphant and victorious despite devastation and misery.
Alongside with the Azov, the brig Mercury is famous for its battle with two
Ottoman ships in 1829. In 1836, in the Russian magazine Современник [The
Contemporary], a contemporary witness talked about the Mercury: “Preferring
seemingly inevitable death to the dishonor of captivity, the brig’s commander
staunchly endured a three-hour battle with his colossal adversary, forcing it to
withdraw in the end. The Turk’s moral defeat was full and unequivocal. Manifested in
the feat of the brig Mercury was a spirit which reigned throughout all the navy’s
rank.”126 Azov and Mercury are the only two ships in the Russian navy which wear a
special battle honor ensign.127 Aivazovsky depicted the Mercury several times. The
choice of subject and its sublime treatment need to be considered in light of the
perception of the Russian victory symbolized through the visualization of the two
ships: Mercury and Azov. With the tsar’s commissions to commemorate the Russian
navy, Aivazovsky’s firsthand involvement with the maneuvers of the Black Sea Fleet,
and eyewitnesses’ textual documents, the Black Sea Fleet’s meaning and visualization
through the genre of battle painting became one of the cornerstones of Aivazovsky’s
career, independent of inflections of whichever part was exemplified. All of which
raised the issue of how the history of the battle was to be represented visually. In this
respect, these two Mercury paintings by Aivazovsky were not simply commemorative
but were a wide-ranging pictorial essay on the nature of Russia as a “rising” maritime
empire at a critical juncture. In his 1848 The Mercury Brig Meeting the Russian
Squadron after Her Victory over Two Turkish Vessels painting [figure 19],
Aivazovsky depicted one of the episodes of the Russo–Ottoman War of 1828–29.
126 Petrova, Ivan Aivazovsky, 132.
127 Morris, Russian Navy, 8.
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During the battle, the brig Mercury was attacked by two Ottoman ships. Thanks to
skillful maneuvering and resistance capability, the Mercury managed to inflict
considerable damage on the Ottoman naval forces before avoiding pursuit. In this
painting, the artist depicted not the battle itself but the moment when the seriously
damaged Russian brig, pierced with holes from Ottoman shells, was bearing down
upon the other Russian ships in full sail on the Black Sea. The emotional atmosphere
of the painting is full of majestic grandeur and power. Great white clouds move slowly
across an immense blue sky. The Mercury, flying full sail against the background of
the sea, comes across a Romantic image of the victory itself. Fifty years later, the artist
again chose to depict this victory. Brig Mercury Attacked by Two Turkish Ships [figure
20] presents three ships in near combat over the raw sea; as the name indicates, two
Ottoman warships battle against the Russian Mercury and the other ship named in the
title.
While Aivazovsky painted numerous seascapes, many of which contained
ships, boats and many that depicted damages or wrecks, few of his works included
ships in close naval battles. Aivazovsky did not simply make the scene up: this battle
actually occurred in 1829. The battle depicted was part of the Russo–Ottoman War, a
war ignited in the 1820s by the Greeks independence struggle and was heavily
romanticized in European thought, especially in Britain, and in which, perhaps the
ultimate “Romantic,” Lord Byron128 offered his services to the Greek side (eventually
128 Between 1850 and 1870, a strong strain of Romanticism, influenced by the movement in Western
Europe, developed among Armenian writers, poets, and artists in all over the world, glorifying figures
from Armenian history. As Vahé Oshagan writes: “The romantic, virtuous, and patriotic hero became
the dominant figure in the new self-consciousness, nurturing around itself the nascent aspirations of
the period.” Vahé Oshagan, “Cultural and Literary Awakening of Western Armenians, 1789–1915,”
Armenian Review 36, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 64. Byron was of particular interest to Armenian writers
because of his commitment to Armenian language and culture. In 1816, Byron visited the Mechitarist
Order at the convent of St. Lazarus, a center of Armenian culture, where he studied Armenian. His
letters recounting this experience, translations of Armenian history and from the Armenian Bible, as
well as some his poems, were published in English and Armenian in 1870. His visit was celebrated by
Aivazovsky in his painting Byron on the Island of San Lazzaro dated 1899.
77
dying of disease).129 Throughout the war, the Russians supported the Greek rebels. The
Ottoman sultan closed the Dardanelles to Russian ships in response. In May 1829, the
Mercury was ambushed by the Ottoman ships off the coast of Anatolia; despite
daunting odds, it was able to escape after a pitched battle.130
The Battle of Navarino, like the other Russo–Ottoman naval battles of
1828-29, is not only viewed as being the decisive success in the naval war against the
Ottoman Empire (with the allied powers of Egypt), but also the possible start of the
pursuit of national excellence.
The Crimean War of 1853–1856
Aivazovsky’s paintings depicting the Battle of Sinop extrapolated a tragedy (the
Russians lost the war against the alliance of Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire
and Piedmont Sardinia) into an event of national significance due to the timing of such
a victory at a critical period of war. The works also represent a didactic transformation
of the loss of war into a moralized account of heroism in the depiction of the
destruction of the Ottoman fleet by the Russians. Although eventually losing the war,
129 Rather than imposing a reductionist manner, the usefulness of European Romanticism, and to some
degree, orientalism theories and practical applications of methodologies to dominant canons, where
the voices of mainly Western European artists may provide valuable concepts. Of the mainstream
French artists, Théodore Géricault, Eugéne Delacroix, and Horace Vernet and their followers argued
that contemporary events were a significant element in modern art of painting. Their untraditional
artistic means bolstered the concept of Romanticism as a language of dissent, an expression of liberal
politics or, it has been said, an artistic democracy designed by outsiders. Nina Athanassoglou-
Kallmyer, “Romanticism: Breaking the Canon,” Art Journal 52 (Summer 1993): 18 – 21; Charles
Rosen and Henri Zerner, Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art
(London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 39. The new emphasis on contemporary subject matter brought with
it an increased insistence on concrete, realistic detail and a sense of specific place, time, and setting.
Ordinary people with ordinary emotions found their way into history painting, and if the nation’s ruler
and his generals continued to be idealized, they now performed on an idealized stage that exposed any
pretenses of allegory. Stephen Bann, “Questions of Genre in Early Nineteenth-Century French
Painting,” New Literary History 34, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 501 – 511. Another approach was to select
contemporary subjects that opposed the government, at home or abroad, and many of what were
probably the last generation of history paintings were demonstrations directed at contemporary
incidents of persecution or indignation at home or abroad: Eugéne Delacroix’s The Massacre at Chios
and Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi. They were heroic but showed the heroic suffering of
ordinary civilians.
130 Grinevetsky and others, The Black Sea Encyclopedia, 653.
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the Russian victory over the Ottoman fleet gave it temporary control over the Black
Sea. Just one Ottoman vessel survived the battle, while all others sank or went offshore
intentionally to avoid sinking. This single ship managed to escape Istanbul to notify
the Ottoman administration of the Sinop defeat. The assault strengthened pro-war
forces in Britain and France and justified war against the Russian invasion.
Aivazovsky painted two pictures of the Battle of Sinop fought on November
18, 1853. One canvas is dated 1853 [figure 21], implying that the artist took just over
a month to paint this enormous canvas. Aivazovsky may have based Battle of Sinop
on the personal recollections of Pavel Nakhimov (1802-1855). The artist first met the
famous admiral on board the Silistria in 1839, during the landing operations on the
Caucasian shores. Following an increasingly dominant convention in shipwreck
iconography of this period, Aivazovsky set the scene on a topographically accurate,
recognizable stretch of the Ottoman and the Russian fleets. It is important to indicate
that topographical specificity also appealed to a level of personal association, for local
eyewitnesses were part of the country, thus appealing further to a sense of individual
identification with the navy.131
In the direction of the Russian ship Vladimir, a boat sails with Russian sailors,
who, apparently, inflicted damage on the Ottoman flotilla Pervaz Bahri, setting ablaze
this first ship. The Russian squadron ships are depicted unharmed. They have stayed
so due to skillful battle techniques. The Russian ships rise in the foreground proudly.
The image shows a contrast between dark and light tones, the Russian fleet flagship in
131 Accuracy is one of the important characteristics of Aivazovsky’s naval battle paintings. In a letter
written to L. A. Preovsky, Aivazovsky wrote: “These circumstances prevented me from traveling to
St. Petersburg. Despite our glorious victories, the coastal inhabitants are living in fear, and no matter
how much we try to talk them out of it, it’s all in vain, so we have moved to our estate. In addition to
this circumstance, another reason holds me back in Crimea, the orders of the pictures reflecting the
capture of the ships. Also, I am now painting a wonderful Battle of Sinop. In order to collect material I
have been living in Sevastopol from where I have taken the most accurate information.” Ivan K.
Aivazovsky’s letter to L. A. Preovsky, January 18, 1854, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian and
Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 115.
79
the forefront. The stylized quality of composition also suggests that Aivazovsky
intended to create an image that was more historical than symbolic or allegorical. In
the background of the painting, as masts shatter and collapse and clouds of smoke and
fire obscure the ships, people try to escape from imminent death by clinging to
wreckage or rigging. Here is shown the fire of not one or two ships but an entire
Ottoman armada. On the one level then, what Aivazovsky emphasizes via this modernday
apocalypse—the “brutal battle”—is the human cost of the battle, the inevitable
outcome.
The second depiction of the Battle of Sinop, Sinop. Night After the Battle
[figure 22], presents the brutality of the war at night. By utilizing the dramatic effect
of darkness with the sharp contrast of a bright yellow/orange fire, Aivazovsky focuses
on the destroyed image of the Ottoman fleet. At the right bottom corner, the silhouette
of the city of Sinop is visible, which is rare in his naval paintings. At the low center of
the painting, we see the group of Ottoman sailors depicted lamenting their ship and
trying to reach the coast to save themselves. It should be considered through the
iconography of shipwrecks of this period (which is the subject of the preceding and
proceeding chapters); rather, it resembles the situation from the enemy’s side. This
image, following the increasing tendency toward melodrama in the published
narratives of the events, has a decreasing emphasis on the accurate material description
of the event in favor of highlighting the human element from a perspective of
empathetic emotive sensibility.132
The Crimean War was the beginning of a new way of naval warfare. The Battle
of Sinop, on the evening of November 18, 1853, was the last major naval engagements
132 I believe that in this painting Aivazovsky created a highly effective, dramatic scene of the Russian
victory. But this time, he also created a more emotional and humane tragedy of war, like in Battle of
Chesme at Night.
80
ever fought to feature sailing ships in history. The Russian fleet, under Admiral
Nakhimov, found the Ottoman fleet in the Bay of Sinop off the north-Ottoman coast.
Nakhimov, in the Russian flagship Empress Maria, gave orders to approach to pointblank
range, despite heavy fire from Ottoman coastal batteries. In the space of a few
hours, the Russians completely destroyed the Ottoman fleet. In May 1854, Aivazovsky
traveled to Sevastopol with a group of five paintings, all of them depicting scenes from
the war. He was greeted by the distressing sight of the tops of the masts of his beloved
Black Sea Fleet, which had been deliberately sunk at the entrance of the harbor in order
to block access to enemy ships. The Romantic age of warships under sail was over.
Among the pictures Aivazovsky had brought with him to the besieged city were two
depictions of the Battle of Sinop. “During the exhibition, which opened at the
beginning of June, Admiral Nakhimov declared these to be extremely realistically
done.”133
Alongside the scene of victory in battle is the conventional parallel narrative of
the misery of the defeated: “conquering” and the “humanization” of the enemy go hand
in hand in both paintings. Aivazovsky’s paintings focused on “celebratory
nationalism,” retreating from the military and ideological uncertainties of the Empire.
These works provide ample demonstration not only of the enormous public appeal that
such paintings could enjoy but also the degree to which they were also conceived. To
an extent, therefore, Aivazovsky’s Battle of Sinop depictions are as much about artistic
self-promotion as they are about contemporary national history and its representation,
and they point to the degree to which art, and particularly the representation of a
nation’s identity through its history, was itself a battleground.
133 Caffiero and Samarine, Light, Water and Sky, 45. Sargsyan, Artunian and Shatirian, Documents
and Materials, 115–116.
81
An overview of eyewitness stories and representations from the fronts that
published in the illustrated periodicals reveals the operation of an established textual
and visual classification throughout the 1850s and 1860s, well into the era of the
Russo–Ottoman conflicts and their aftermaths. Colorful images attracted subscribers,
attracted by visual interpretations close to reality.134 The cumulative body of
representations—both text and image—were effective in V. Timm’s Русский
Художественный Листок (The Russian Art Leaflet).135 This illustrated magazine
published Timm’s own and other artists’ works, including Ivan Aivazovsky, Peter
Sokolov (1821–1899), and Mikhail Mikeshin (1835–1896) in lithographs and was of
chief importance in the reproduction and use of images. Before photography became
a key important medium for reporting, Timm’s lithographs promoted a political agenda
and a cause, aiming to shape public opinion in a propagandistic way.136 Timm’s
journal’s contribution was of great significance to the visual materials of the Crimean
War, for example in the drawing by Aivazovsky depicting Osman Pasha [figure 23],
the vice-admiral and commander of the Ottoman ships at Sinop, and Adem Bey,
commander of the Ottoman frigate at Sinop, as captives—wounded and situated at the
top of the picture lying down on the bed; the French illustrator and lithographer
Auguste Marie Raffi’s lithograph portrays the Ottoman recruits at the bottom. When
Raffi was in Sevastopol, he had an opportunity to talk with the Ottoman commanders.
134 Hanna Chuchvaha, Art Periodical Culture in Late Imperial Russia, 1898-1917 (Leiden: Brill,
2016), 22.
135 Русский Художественный Листок (The Russian Art Leaflet) was produced two or three times
weekly between 1851 and 1862. Timm’s innovation was to hold the copyrights to all the pictures
published. He used this “artistic property” extensively in his lithographic works, which carefully
reproduced his models and achieved a high level of authenticity. Timm did not include full textual
accounts of the incidents shown in these lithographs, however. Rather, his goal was to educate the
reader visually, with the images dominating and text giving only a summary detail. Prior to the advent
of photography as the primary medium of reporting in Imperial Russia, Timm was its premier art
reporter, recording the Crimean War as well as the St. Petersburg court life and the fairs, festivals, and
races of everyday St. Petersburg. Ibid.
136 For propaganda, see: Nicholas Cull and others, eds., Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A
Historical Encyclopedia 1500 to the Present (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 317-323.
82
In the short text with the drawings is written that “Aivazovsky asked the Pasha why
they did not send a ship to Sinop and Pasha replied: ‘The result would only be the same
with our [incapable] sailors.’”137 The historian Candan Badem gives more detail about
this decision and supports Osman Pasha, who found himself wounded and robbed by
his own crew.138
In both lithographs, the artists assembled every trope relating to defeat, which
suggests a perception of a precise Russian naval victory: the group of soldiers taken as
prisoners of war, walking under the watch of Russian leaders, two wounded Ottoman
commanders, lying on a bed with desperate and embarrassed gazes. These coalesce
into a suitable backdrop showcasing a victorious battlefield setting with masculine and
patriotic virility and wounded and defeated enemy figures. These typical examples of
the pervasive exoticization of the enemy idealize the concept of victory and nudge the
emotions of the Russian people into being lively and prideful.
A unique painting in the series of Aivazovsky’s depictions of maritime
successes, the Siege of Sevastopol [figure 24] is set against the background of the
“glorious victories” production of the visual history of maritime Russia, crossing the
blurred boundaries of public and private interests in the victory depictions. With
prolific imagery representing the “heroic” Sevastopol defense desired, this painting
shows an episode in the life of the besieged Sevastopol during the Crimean War.
Aivazovsky himself visited the town during the war several times.139 He made
137 Vasiliy Timm, “Отрывок Письма из Симферополя от 24-го Декабря” [Excerpt Letter from
Simferopol on December, 24th] Русский Художественный Листок 3 [The Russian Art Leaflet] 20
January 1854.
138 Badem, Kırım Savaşı ve Osmanlılar, 120.
139 In one of his letters written to the head of the Lazarev Oriental Languages Institute in Moscow,
Christopher Ekimovich Lazarev, Aivazovsky wrote: “Recently, I myself went to the Crimea alone,
was also in Sevastopol on October 28, had the good fortune to introduce myself to their imperial
highnesses, and, at the request of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, I quickly drew a general view of
Sevastopol during a strong cannonade. It is sad for the Russian heart to see the impudent enterprise of
dishonest British and French, but with God’s grace our brave army, our dear corner of the Crimea will
stand; the courage of our sailors is beyond description. We must see the action of our bastions, and
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exhibitions of his creative works, communicating with the participants to solicit their
ideas. Quite different from his Romantic style, in this painting the buildings are painted
thoroughly since this is a miniature technique. Sevastopol remains alone in this
dramatic situation. To the right of the town are the mountains; to the left, up to the
horizon, is the sea. Numerous explosions with smoke above vanishing into air, masts
of scuttled ships at the entrance of Northern Bay, and military figures remind us of the
war. Beyond this descriptive information, this painting reminds one of the “Lejeunian
mode,”140 which had become popular during the Imperial Period and the Restoration
of France. This mode provided for a general overview of the military episode, which
include as much detail as possible of the battlefield and the chaos.141 Louis-François
Lejeune (1775–1848) turned to past examples of official topographical military scenes
and reworked their conventions to fit artistic needs. Lejeune also depicted the Battle
of Borodino, fought in 1812 between the Napoleonic French and the Russian army
under the command of Tsar Alexander I. Different elements of this patriotic war were
later painted over and over again by Russian artists, including Vasily Vereshchagin
then we can imagine and believe everything that is told about the garrison of Sevastopol.” Ivan K.
Aivazovsky’s letter to C. E. Lazarev, 17 November 1854, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian and
Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 117.
140 Derin Tanyol’s term “Lejeunian mode” refers to the paintings of Louis-François Lejeune, which
depict the whole battle in tiny proportions within a topographical view. Derin Tanyol, “Napoleonic
Painting from Gros to Delaroche: A Study in History Minor” (Ph.D. diss., The City University of New
York, 1999), 303.
141 The war paintings of the post-revolutionary salons generally boasted monumental proportions and
towering themes of military glory in foreign lands; however, they differed hugely in style. This reflected
the range of commissioned artists and their personal and artistic backgrounds. In her article, Susan
Siegfried classifies two modes, or “new rhetorics,” of military painting produced under Napoleon: the
affective mode, represented by Gros’s The Battle of Nazareth, and the documentary mode, exemplified
by Louis-François Lejeune’s The Battle of Marengo. Siegfried, Susan L. “Naked History: The Rhetoric
of Military Painting in Postrevolutionary France.” Art Bulletin 75, no. 2 (June 1993): 236. Siegfried also
notes that the fact that he had been a soldier may explain Lejeune’s interest in documentary details.
Besides the “documentary” and “affective” modes, another interpretation comes from Michael
Marrinan. He describes two genres of history painting: one is the grand manner of history painting,
exemplified by François Gérard’s Battle of Austerlitz, while the other possesses a more illustrative
approach, as shown in Horace Vernet’s Napoleonic battle-painting canvases. Michael Marrinan,
“Historical Vision and the Writing of History at Louis-Philippe’s Versailles,” in The Popularization of
Images: Visual Culture under the July Monarchy, ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Gabriel P.
Weisberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 113–143.
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(1842–1904). This time, through Aivazovsky’s topographic view, we perceive the
fundamental divergence in history painting’s uses as both a system of documentation
and as a realm of personalized delight in narration; this would also result in the
transfiguration of history painting, once a forum for academic idealism, into an
expression of public and personal consciousness. Consequently, following the formal
structure of the classical heroic mythology, the visual narrative concludes
appropriately with the heroic defense of the city, Sevastopol—this time, in a
sentimentally mundane and documentary composition, in contrast to Aivazovsky’s
other epic scenography.
It is interesting to note that the Crimean War, which was a turning point in
Russian history, was poorly reflected in Russia and, in particular, academic painting
of that time. Rather, Russian battle painting decided to pass by the Crimean War and
its heroic events in silence. In his article “Twenty-Five Years of Russian Art,” the
famous art historian/critic Vladimir Stasov criticizes academics and battle painters that
avoided the important events of the era, drawing instead on military events of the
past—more precisely, ancient Greek and Roman eras. Stasov writes:
The Crimean War began. It was, of course, the time for art to serve its real great
service. What other epoch could be more important, where it would be possible to find
more amazing tasks and plots, more expensive for the whole Russian society, where
there was a greater variety of life and scenes? But the art of the Nicholas time remained
blind and deaf to this; it was caught off guard in the midst of its lethargy and
aristocratic colorlessness. He was alien to everything where there is life and truth. […]
And then suddenly it was required to depict real living people […] Let any of our
professors be asked then to draw the ‘Battle of the Horatii and the Christians,’ or
‘Samson Beating the Philistines,’ or ‘The Battle of Alexander the Great,’ or, perhaps,
even ‘Alexander Nevsky,’ no one would refuse. But depicting real living people, for
today’s Russian artists, did not have its own place.142
Agreeing with Stasov’s criticism concerning the neglected subjects in Russian
battle painting, Minas Sargsyan wrote that, in spite of their significance, even the battle
142 Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov, Избранные сочинения в трех томах [Selected Works in Three
Volumes], vol. 2, (Moscow, 1952), 398–399.
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paintings of Aivazovsky were, for some reason, simply ignored.143 And yet, as
Sargsyan strongly emphasizes, Aivazovsky was one of the first artists to reflect the
theme of the Crimean War, and these paintings should be considered rare and
important sources of Russian artistic and intellectual engagement with their depictions
of Russian superiority and how Russia’s maritime rise on the Black Sea was perceived
by Russian–Armenian intellectuals, including artists.144
Depicting the Sacred Martyrdom: Heroic Death and Allegory in Aivazovsky’s
The Malakhov Burial Mound
On October 16, knowing that a heavy allied bombardment would take place the
following day, Kornilov wrote his wife, ‘Many of us will not be alive tomorrow night.’
An aide pleaded with the admiral in advance to stay under cover when the shells fell,
but Kornilov replied, ‘If I am not seen everywhere out there tomorrow, just what will
they think of me?’ Joined by Nakhimov, Kornilov kept his word. Nakhimov was soon
slightly wounded, and his aide was drenched with the blood of a sailor blown apart by
a heavy shell, but now accompanied by Istomin, Kornilov continued his rounds until
hit by a round shot that smashed his leg and tore into his abdomen. Rushed to the naval
hospital, Kornilov told surgeons not to waste their time on him. He died only minutes
later and was buried in a plot on a nearby hill.145
In 1893, Aivazovsky painted The Malakhov Burial Mound [figure 25] showing
the panorama of Sevastopol with the legendary Malakhov Burial Mound in the
foreground in the rays of setting sun. In 1854, the commander of the Russian fleet, V.
A. Kornilov, headed up the defensive positions of Sevastopol. On October 17, 1854,
he was mortally wounded when the town was bombarded. The sailors made a cross of
cannonballs (the cross has been preserved) on the Malakhov Burial Mound, at the
143 As Sargsyan notes, his name is not even mentioned in the relevant section of V. Sadoven’s book
Russian Battle Painters of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter,
104–105. For further information, see, V. V. Sadoven, Русские Боевые Художники XVIII-XIX Веков
[Russian Battle Painters of the 18th and 19th Centuries] (Moscow, 1955).
144 Sargsyan also mentions that the Crimean War, specifically the eastern (the Caucasian) front was
also depicted by Armenian artists. A portrait of the commander of the Caucasian front, General V. H.
Bebutyan (Behbutov) by the Armenian artist Stephanos Hagob Nersisyan shows an unparalleled
corpus of such representations during the war period. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter,
106.
145 Robert B. Edgerton, Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War (Colorado: Westview Press,
1999), 199.
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precise site of the tragedy. As mentioned throughout this chapter, Aivazovsky’s visit
to Sevastopol under siege during the War involved an exhibition of his work there for
the defenders of the city.
In the later decades, he painted the Malakhov Burial Mound with the inscription:
“The Place Where Kornilov Was Mortally Wounded.” When the confusion and the
power of the war are replicated, in which day and night fuse together and sky and sea
seem to be burning with fire, the artist portrays things that go way beyond routine, just
as when he paints the moods of nature in tempests and gales. This painting represents
a premier manifestation of Aivazovsky’s Romantic view of the world, of nature, and
of the extreme bravery and selflessness of sailors.146 By applying one of the primary
functions of history painting,147 Aivazovsky focused on glorious and heroic death that
demanded depiction in an “epic manner.” However, rather than using the established
conventions of history paintings (see Horace Vernet’s The Taking of the Malakhov
Redoubt, 1858),148 Aivazovsky developed a highly successful (if inherently
fictionalized) form of heroic representation that matched Russian visual culture criteria
representing the heroic defense of Malakhov, Sevastopol. Utilizing the quasi-religious
tradition of the “death tableau” in his Malakhov painting, Aivazovsky incorporated a
focus on the figure of a wounded soldier visiting the cross created by the soldiers of
the war within a broader, more panoramic view of the city (from the hill) to create a
novel pictorial “middle ground” between the intimacy of the “death tableau” of
contemporary history painting and the more distant viewpoint conventional with naval
battle painting. This Aivazovsky achieved by adopting a usual viewpoint looking down
146 Churak, “An Artist of Hellenic Spirit,” 31.
147 See for example, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997), 145–65.
148 Vernet made use of soldiers’ and eyewitness’ accounts of the Crimean War and Jean-Charles
Langlois’s photographs of Malakhov Kurgan. Stephen Bann, Printmakers, Painters and Photographs
in Nineteenth Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 123.
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from the hill of Sevastopol, where Admiral Kornilov was mortally wounded, toward
the city of Sevastopol, which has a great significance (both geographically and
ideologically) in Russian history.
Furthermore, what Kornilov and the others sought at Malakhov was a decisive
outcome. Russia might have appeared almost invulnerable to a naval power, but the
loss of the Sevastopol further embarrassed Nicholas I as he had vowed to protect it
with limitless resources and at any expense. It was an unexpected setback. During
Sevastopol’s nearly one-year siege during the Crimean War, the fortifications of
Malakhov, overlooking the entire city and the inner harbor, were strongly contested.
But after the French army was successful in 1855, the Russian defenders evacuated the
whole city, bringing a climax to the war. With the fortress enabling control of
Sevastopol’s Black Sea Harbor, the Russian forces destroyed and withdrew all their
equipment and left Russia on the Black Sea without any more military fortifications.
Free passage through the Straits to the Mediterranean for Russian ships was not, it
turned out, to be enabled by a domination of the inland sea. Aivazovsky chose to
represent, in 1893, the heroic defense of the city. But the cost of that defense would
also be devastating for the Russians. As Kornilov insisted on leading from the front,
he necessarily put himself within range of enemy fire and, finally, he was fatally
wounded. At first glance in this painting, Kornilov is notable by his absence. In reality,
he infuses the canvas, not only by his association through the focus on the hill where
he was wounded and by the various details Aivazovsky incorporated—such as the
cross made from cannonballs and the inscription of the painting—but also through the
tranquil representation of the whole city itself. Indeed, the hill of Malakhov, and thus
Admiral Kornilov, presides over a scene of martyrdom and national pride. On one level
then, what Aivazovsky emphasizes via this modern-day apocalypse—this “heroic
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defense of Sevastopol,”149 as various nineteenth-century novelists and poets described
it, including the famous Leo Tolstoy150—is the human cost of the battle, the inevitable
outcome. Note that Aivazovsky’s painting should be read as a rebuke: by the standards
of his day, he was a very patriotic man who admired the navy and the admirals
(Kornilov, Nakhimov, Lazarev—whom he personally met during naval maneuvers he
attended) in equal measure. The transition from Aivazovsky’s former battle scenes,
which focused on the destruction of the enemy fleet, to this painting and its broader
focus, requires further examination.
In contrast with other celebratory images of this epoch-making event, by
Aivazovsky himself and others (including the Russian Bogulyubov and European
artists), Aivazovsky’s melancholic representation focused on its terrible aftermath, and
specifically on the dead or wounded image of the army. Aivazovsky sought to
149 The medals that were ordered after the battle clearly illustrate how the city and the defense of
Sevastopol occupied a great place in Russian official history. Generally, in Russia, medals and
decorations and love for the motherland combined with patriotism are clearly illustrated. The
Sevastopol medal has a distinctive place among the Russian medals and decorations awarded during
the Crimean War. There are three Sevastopol medals: the Sevastopol Defense Medal features on one
side monographs of Tsar Alexander II and Tsar Nicholas I, the latter having died during the war. On
the other side are engraved the dates 1854–1855. This medal was given by Alexander II to the soldiers
that defended Sevastopol. The Sevastopol Cross was created by Alexander III in 1890. On one side,
the number “349” is engraved, a code indicating the 349 days the Sevastopol siege lasted, thus
referring to the “great” Russian defense. On the other side is engraved “1854–1855 Sevastopol.” The
third medal is the Sevastopol Medal, which was minted by Tsar Nicholas II to commemorate the
fiftieth year of the Sevastopol defense. Taking into consideration the fact that a medal was created for
Sevastopol fifty years later, it is safe to assert that Sevastopol was a milestone in Russian war
mythology. Robert Werlich, Russian Orders, Decorations and Medals including those of Imperial
Russia, the Provisional Government, the Civil War and the Soviet Union (Washington: Quaker Press,
1981), 4–5; The Moscow Kremlin, Old Russian Orders (Moscow: The Moscow Kremlin State
Historical and Cultural Museum, 1995), 12–15.
150 Serhii Plokhy has termed “the myth of Sevastopol,” which stressed the heroism of Russian troops
in a conflict that resulted in defeat for the army but a “victory” for Russian heroism and the “Russian
spirit.” Because of such heroism, Sevastopol became a “sacred space,” a site of patriotism and
national identity that transformed the Crimean city into a “city of Russian glory” representing a
symbol of Russia’s “glorious past.” Serhii Plokhy, “The City of Glory: Sevastopol in Russian
Historical Mythology.” Journal of Contemporary History 35/3 (July 2000): 369–83. He obtained, he
his commission in 1854 and was transferred, at his request, to the army fighting in Walachia against
the Ottomans, where he took part in the siege of Silistria (located in northeastern Bulgaria). In
November of the same year, he joined the garrison of Sevastopol, where he wrote the battlefield
observations Sevastopol Sketches, widely seen as his first approach to the techniques to be used so
effectively in his masterpiece War and Peace. Leo Tolstoy, The Sevastopol Sketches, translated with
an introduction and notes by David McDuff (London: Penguin Books, 1986).
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encapsulate the significance of the defense of Sevastopol, focusing on the human cost
this time, by creating a more literal representation of a particular moment after the
battle, underlined by his incorporation of the panoramic view of Sevastopol. The
stylized quality of the composition, this time suggests he intended to create an image
that was, contrary to his naval battle scenes, more symbolic than strictly historical.
While Aivazovsky’s painting responds in sophisticated ways to a wider
discourse on the visual representation of national history in the Russian Empire
between the 1850s and 1890s, it also makes reference to the artist’s own personal
interest in the defense of Sevastopol and the Crimean War in general.
The View from Sevastopol: The Two Depictions of the Squadron of the Black Sea
Fleet Entering the Sevastopol Roadstead
My voyage with his imperial highness Konstantin Nikolayevich was extremely
pleasant and interesting, everywhere I managed to sketch out for paintings […]
Returning from there to his homeland, I was fortunate by the will of his imperial
majesty to sail from Nikolaev to Sevastopol on the same steamship with his majesty,
who all the time was extremely gracious to me and commissioned me to paint many
works during a naval inspection in Sevastopol.151
In the summer of 1846, Aivazovsky contributed a painting entitled Russian
Squadron on the Sevastopol Roadstead [figure 26]. Commissioned by Tsar Nicholas
I, the painting shows an Emperor’s standard afloat on a yacht. His ships are lined up
in front of the Black Sea it, waiting to greet the Tsar. There is no indication of the
tragedy to come, when the boats depicted in the painting, including the flagship The
Twelve Apostles, were sunk at the entrance to Sevastopol Bay in 1854 trying to prevent
the entry of the French, British, and Turkish fleet. The painting, does, however,
151 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to Count Zubov, March 16, 1846, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian and
Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 89–90.
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illustrate the ritual of sailors, afterward abolished, in which they would stand on the
mast of the boat in harbor.
In contrast to his second depiction of the squadron of the Black Sea Fleet,
Squadron of the Black Sea Fleet Entering the Sevastopol Roadstead (1895), the first
one was a royal commission [figure 27]. Thus, we must conclude that the
representation was meant by the artist to be broadly celebratory (indeed, Aivazovsky
was with the navy and the Emperor to record this visit). Returning to the idea of the
symbolism of the navy and the ship of the state: the key to Aivazovsky’s approach
may be found in the contemporary significance of The Twelve Apostles, both as a ship
and an outcome, in post-war years. Aivazovsky’s numerous representations of The
Twelve Apostles signify not only national defense but also the power and authority of
the navy, and, by extension, the state. Thus, the Crimean War, and more specifically
the defense of Sevastopol, offered a unique opportunity for the “final rehabilitation”
of the sailors as consenting members of a deeply patriotic, loyal, and dutiful
community. Indeed, the loyalty that Admiral Kornilov inspired in those who served
under him was emphasized in reports, narratives, and biographical sketches, before
and after his death. This loyalty was symbolically re-enacted by the depiction of a
wounded soldier at the place where Kornilov was mortally wounded, with the cannonmade
cross shown at the very center of the painting, alluding to Sevastopol’s status as
a “sacred” city.
A glance at Aivazovsky’s 1895 Squadron of the Black Sea Fleet, The Twelve
Apostles—more as a silhouette in smoky gray clouds with a shadowy light sea—
suggests that, despite its depictions of The Twelve Apostles ship in the center (as was
a namesake painting, dated 1846, different in its restrained and stylistically
conservative celebration), the artist’s newest brushes endowed his subject with a
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Romantic emotionality. This complex image can accommodate countless
interpretations, such as the passing of the age of sail to that of steam, or more broadly
death and regeneration. At the time, Aivazovsky was focusing, above all, on the
expendability of this famous warship and the resonance of its fate in terms of Russian
naval and imperial power. The city of Sevastopol was the headquarters of the tsar’s
Black Sea Fleet, and its siege is notorious still today, culminating in the battle for the
strategic Russian port in 1854-55, the final episode during the Crimean War. On 13
February 1855, The Twelve Apostles was ordered to construct a second beamline in
Sevastopol Bay together with six other vessels. The Russian commanders arrived at
the difficult decision to plunge the ships across the entry channel in order to prevent
entry to the port to help the coastal batteries. The crew of the ship disembarked to
reinforce the walls of the city, and The Twelve Apostles was scuttled and sunk.
Both of Aivazovsky’s squadron Black Sea Fleet paintings formed part of his
bequest to the nation. Technically similar, the second painting provides a study of
unrestrained emotional pathos, its amplified Romantic timbre visible in the artist’s
overflowing empathy for the Black Sea Fleet. The second representation of the fleet
with a focus on the lonely image of The Twelve Apostles is tinged with sadness, and,
rather than being celebratory, represents essential sacrifice, patriotism, and endurance.
The unrestrained Romanticism of the second image, in particular the sole focus on the
image of The Twelve Apostles as representing the brutal nature of the war, means it is
far from being nationally commemorative and celebratory.
The Russo–Ottoman War of 1877–1878
Russia’s entry into the war against the Ottoman Empire entailed numerous domestic
and foreign policy advantages and opportunities. By mobilizing Russian nationalist
fervor in support of the Slavic cause, Russia’s victory over the Ottomans would
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perpetuate the unity of all Russian classes, heighten the prestige of the autocracy, and
erode domestic political dissent and opposition; internationally, the liberation and
unification of the Slavs would, at last, be realized. The Crimean War convinced all the
maritime powers that it was essential to build steamships.152 Indeed, Russia was almost
defenseless at sea at the end of the war. The Black Sea Fleet was sunk; a single screwpropelled
Vyborg ship guarded the Baltic coast in 1856. Yet, the Russian fleet’s
military strength ranked third in the world in the late 1870s, after Russia refused the
terms of the 1871 Paris Peace Treaty and restored its Black Sea Fleet.153 Russian
officials and sailors, having gained experience on expeditions in the 1860s and 70s,
returned to the fleet to reveal the success of their training and their fighting skills.154
In 1877, Russia was again at war with the Ottoman Empire. Although
principally characterized by a series of land campaigns, the war was notable for the
introduction of a number of new naval systems. In the Black Sea, Russian naval forces
based their efforts on the defense of Odessa, Ochakov, Sevastopol, Balaklava, and
Kerch. Just eight fast steamers were able to disrupt enemy lines. On 11 July 1877, The
Vesta, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Nikolay Baranov, withstood a five-
152 The Crimean War has nearly always been regarded as a predominantly land campaign, but from a
naval point of view it must be regarded as one of the turning points in the development of the warship.
It ushered in the new explosive shell, for which the Russians must be given full credit, which in turn
led to the development of the armored ship and the race between gun and armor which occupied the
second half of the nineteenth century. The Crimea also heralded another major development in
warship design steam propulsion. Watts, Russian Navy, 14.
153 The Baltic Fleet was rebuilt after the Crimean War, but without any addition in sailing ships. The
new Fleet comprised eighteen ships of the line and ten frigates, all steam-powered with screw
propellers. A Mediterranean squadron was created for the destroyed Black Sea Fleet, while the
Siberian Flotilla and Pacific squadron were formed for the Far East. Ibid.
154 General-Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, a younger brother of Emperor Alexander
II, directed the restoration of the fleet. After taking command of the Russian navy and naval
department, in 1855, Konstantin Nikolayevich initiated reductions in the central administration and
coastal unit staffs. A tremendous effort was made to recover Russia’s maritime position, and a new
shipbuilding program laid down the foundations for steamships. The introduction into the British and
French navies of ironclads led Russia to convert two wooden ships to armored frigates. As innovative
technology on its own does not make a modern, efficient navy, the Grand Duke also instituted a major
reorganization of training with a new scheme of naval education and training affecting the whole fleet,
from newly joined boys right up to flag-officer level. Ibid.
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hour battle, taking on the sizeable and heavily armored ship Feth-i Bülend. It was a
heavy engagement, with the Vesta losing one quarter of its crew (killed or wounded),
but still the Vesta inflicted damage on the enemy ship and was able to escape pursuit.
The Russian ships victory was hailed by contemporaries, compared even with the
exploit of the legendary Mercury, mentioned earlier in this chapter.
Aivazovsky painted a series of works depicting episodes from the Russo–
Ottoman War of 1877–78. He also held an exhibition of works in St. Petersburg to
raise money for injured soldiers. He closely followed the course of events and painted
many pictures lauding the heroism of the Russian fleet such as Battle between Steamer
Vesta and the Turkish Battleship Feth-i Bülend on the Black Sea on 11 July 1877
[figure 28],155 Cutters of the Steamship Grand Duke Konstantin Attacking the Turkish
Battleship Asar-ı Şevket on the Sukhumi Roadstead on 12 August 1877 [figure 29],
The Russian Steamer Russia Taking the Turkish Steamer Mersin on the Black Sea on
13 December 1877, and Explosion of a Three-Mast Turkish Steamship Sulina on 27
September 1877. All of these four paintings done by Aivazovsky to glorify the Russian
navy during the Russo–Ottoman War of 1877–78 can be read as the transformation of
a contemporary maritime event into full-scale grand history painting across the
introduction of the steamships, clearly an attempt to transcend the particularities of
battle and turn them into something of general, philosophical, and national
significance, as history painting was meant to be. In this sense, it can be regarded as
155 In this painting, Aivazovsky depicts the moment when Vesta, a Russian steamship converted into a
military vessel and commanded by Admiral Baranov (1837–1901), meets the Feth-i Bülend on the
open sea and engages the Ottoman ship in battle. The Feth-i Bülend pursued Vesta for five hours,
pounding the Russian ship and its crew. The Vesta heroically withstood the Ottoman attack and then
scored a direct hit on the Feth-i Bülend from its six-inch cannon, forcing the Ottoman warship to
withdraw from the scene of battle.
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an allegory of the maritime empire/nation through reference to the prestigious and
iconic episodes of contemporary maritime history.
In Asar-ı Şevket on the Sukhumi Roadstead, Aivazovsky depicts an episode
from the 1877–78 War. In 1876, Vice-Admiral S. O. Makarov (1849–1904) received
command of the Grand Duke Konstantin, a commercial steamer converted into a
battleship. Undercover of darkness, the Grand Duke Konstantin conveyed steam
cutters equipped with mines and torpedoes to the Sukhumi Roadstead, where the
Ottoman fleet was moored. The Russians blew up the Ottoman ships, making a major
contribution to the Russian victory in the war. The story of the encounter also gave the
artist the opportunity to paint the lightning effects and the seawater exploding into the
air. Admiral Makarov was one of the first to adopt the idea of using fleets of torpedo
boats and had combat experience as a torpedo boat commander.
Except for Asar-ı Şevket on the Sukhumi Roadstead, the other paintings’
“failure,” at this level, rests in their falling between the incompatibilities of the
documentary marine painting on the one hand and history painting on the other. But
there are other wider contexts that need to be considered here as well. In the first place,
Aivazovsky was responding to the specific requirement taking account of numerous
compositional and thematic ways. Aivazovsky’s Russo–Ottoman War (1877–78)
picture series is, therefore, a response to the contemporary history of art as well as the
maritime nation. Importantly in this regard, rather than evaluating these works as a
reflection of the artist’s “conforming to a lifelong preoccupation with painting the sea,”
we should place them within a larger technical documentary trajectory of national
maritime history: all of them depict newly created steamers emphasizing their novel
methodology. It is worth mentioning that the Russo–Ottoman War of 1877–78 gave a
second chance to Russia to renovate the Black Sea Fleet lost after the Crimean War.
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Thus, the new historically conceived pictorial scheme followed the broad discursive
pattern and didactic schemes. The earlier paintings depicting the Russo–Ottoman wars
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be seen as the abandonment of the more
conventional and generalized format of marine painting in favor of being a more
idiosyncratic and particularized treatment of the battle and was, therefore, also a move
toward a more personal artistic historical concern with previous battles, especially the
Crimean War. However, his paintings of the 1877–78 war have a resonance with
history in general and the wider significance of historical discourse in the 1870s,
particularly regarding the role of the changing naval history in the construction of the
Russian Empire as a maritime nation and a sole dominant figure in the geographical
boundaries of the Black Sea.
Among the romanticized and represented battlefield scenes of the Russo–
Ottoman wars executed by Aivazovsky, Alexander II Crossing the Danube [figure 30]
appears as an alternative inspirational source for the “pan-Slavism” project, which was
one of the motivations for the Russian Empire in this war. The crossing of Russian
troops over the Danube and arriving in Sofia was celebrated by both the Bulgarians
and Russians.156 This war was depicted as a holy war designed to free fellow Christians
from Muslim control. The role of the tsar as the commander of the army and his arrival
in Sofia is also important in showing the triumphal tone continued in Aivazovsky’s
paintings and in other popular culture media, including lubki.157 By the end of the fall
156 Stephen M. Norris, A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National
Identity: 1812-1945 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 91; Walter G. Moss, Russia
in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 178–186.
157 In Russia, the traditional concept of the lubok (plural lubki) was very important to nation’s visual
and cultural presentation. These colorful prints, can be best described as energetic illustrations with
short text placed in the lower portion of the images Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read:
Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). The
Russian army capturing Plevna and Kars was also one of the popular themes in popular culture. By
analyzing how the lubok prints occupied a significant role in Russian culture and in the articulation of
national identity between the years 1812 and 1945, Stephen Norris indicates that the Russo–Ottoman
War of 1877–78, described as a holy war against the Muslim enemy, and both the captures of Plevna
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of 1877, the siege of Plevna had taken its toll on the Ottomans. After three unsuccessful
attempts to storm the fortress, the Russian troops isolated the Ottoman fort and forced
the Ottoman army into the open. The fortress fell into Russian hands in late November
1877.158 The impending Russian victory prompted the appearance of Tsar Alexander
II in the wartime images. As Norris states, with the war apparently won by December,
the popular prints reemphasized the role Alexander II had played in the victory, in
which he appeared not only to inspire Russian courage on the ground but also as a
fellow soldier and a father figure involved in the welfare of his armies.159 The persona
of the tsar as a dual liberator provides a realistic and powerful vehicle for Aivazovsky
to represent his own settled image of both the tsar and the war, and through that figure
to render, on the one hand, a victory-building tsar with an emphasis on him being in
the battlefield personally, and on the other hand the symbolization of Russia’s glorious
navy through the depiction of the Russian steamship in the foreground.
Another point I would like to examine in the course of this war is the capture
of the city of Kars by the Russian army. According to Minas Sargsyan, who wrote a
monograph about the artist, with the naval battle depictions of this war, Aivazovsky
also chose to paint the power and strength of the Russian army fighting for “the
liberation of the Christians from the Ottoman yoke,” including the Armenians. In
(in the west) and Kars and Ardahan (in the east) symbolize the liberation of Christians (both Slavs and
the Armenians) from Ottoman rule. Norris, A War of Images, 80–106.
158 Bruce Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1992).
159 Norris, A War of Images, 89. The popular prints of 1878 attempted to laud the Russian tsar’s role in
bringing victory. The startling print entitled “Two Unforgettable Victories of Emperor Alexander II”
contains separate panels that celebrate the greatest achievements of the tsar’s reign. The first depicts
the tsar standing on snowy ground in the middle of a peasant village with the text at the bottom noting
that this image depicts “the freeing of twenty-three million peasants from the bonds of servitude,” a
reference to Alexander II’s freeing of Russian serfs in 1861. The second panel contains the tsar on a
white horse riding at the head of his troops, greeted by foot soldiers waving the imperial flag. On the
left, several Serbian peasants kneel in joy before their Russian hero, and the text claims that the
second victory of Alexander II was “the freeing of the Slavs from the Turkish yoke.” As the image
makes clear, both of these “victories” helped to advance the idea that Alexander was a dual liberator.
Ibid., 223.
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addition to naval victories, Aivazovsky produced a painting that glorified the victory
of the Russian army on land. He was particularly pleased with the successful
campaigns on the Caucasian front on behalf of the Russian army. The Liberation of
the City of Kars depicted the successes of the Russian army and was directly related
to the liberation of Armenians.160
Sargsyan also mentions the Armenian intelligentsia and how they were
working to help the Russian army spread a national consciousness among the
Armenian people. Tbilisi was one of the important intellectual political and socioeconomic
centers of the Russian–Armenian population and their networks across the
Empire and beyond.161 It should also be noted that the Tbilisi intelligentsia played an
active role in illustrating how Ottoman Armenia and its people were perceived. It was
one of the intellectual centers for Armenians in the nineteenth century.162 One of the
Tbilisi newspapers, founded by Grigor Artsruni, was Mshak,163 which serialized
Armenian literature and was linked to liberal ideas. One of the influential writers of
the magazine, Raffi164, and others wrote numerous articles, poems, and prose that
encouraged Armenians to free themselves from Ottoman rule.
160 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 160–161. I have not personally come across this
painting. Sargsyan also mentioned this painting never reached audiences, but Shahen Khactrian also
mentions this painting, emphasizing that, although this painting was not an official commission,
Aivazovsky chose to depict this scene, and it expresses “general national enthusiasm with which
Aivazovsky possessed.” Khactrian, Aivazovsky: Well-Known and Unknown, 46.
161 Ronald G. Suny, The Making of the Modern Georgian Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1989).
162 By providing population statistics of nineteenth-century Tbilisi, Vazken Davidian indicated it was
impossible to have discussions in the Russian, Armenian political, cultural, and socio-economic
development in the nineteenth century without taking account of the role of Tbilisi and its intellectual
elites. Vazken K. Davidian, “The Figure of the Bantoukhd [migrant worker] from Ottoman Armenia
in Late Nineteenth Century Constantinople,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Birkbeck College,
University of London, 2018, 244. I am grateful to Vazken K. Davidian to share his article and also the
part of his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation devoted to Russian intellectual perception on Ottoman
Armenian victimhood in which include Aivazovsky’s depiction on the subject.
163 For Mshak see: Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, 1981, vol. 7, 655.
164 Agop J. Hacikyan and others, The Heritage of Armenian Literature (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 2005), 420–422.
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The Russian troops took the fortress of Kars on the night of November 6, 1877.
During the campaign, the Russian army was aided by Armenian generals, officers, and
local residents. The “heroic” liberation of Kars and Armenians from Ottoman rule was
celebrated in the region. The Mshak newspaper wrote: “Sunday, November 6, Tiflis
learned that our troops took the fortress of Kars. When every Tiflis citizen learned that
the city was captured by the Russian army, the whole of Tiflis expressed great joy.”165
As Sargsyan noted, when Aivazovsky learned this news, he decided to depict this
heroic victory. Русская Старина [Russian Antiquity] also wrote that “we assume that
our venerable artist will depict the capture of Kars at night. In addition to drawings
and photographs, Ivan Konstantinovich intended to use guidance from the
eyewitnesses who saw this stronghold of Asian Turkey.”166 Although Sargsyan also
mentions that the picture never reached an audience, Aivazovsky, for an accurate view,
interviewed and consulted with many people who had seen the fortress. Among these
was the famous Armenian Lieutenant-General Arshak Ter-Gukasov, the commander
of the Yerevan forces of the Russian Army during the war. Owing to his success in
battle, Ter-Gukasov was awarded medals by Imperial Russia.167 Unfortunately, all the
165 Mshak, no. 83, November 1877, 2–4. On the first page of the newspaper, under the “Unification of
Armenia,” the author writes that the capture of Kars was an important turning point in the war.
Erzurum, in a very short period of time, would also fall, and thus all Armenia would be able to unite
with Russia because when Erzurum fell, there would be no fortress to resist the strong armies of
Russia and Armenia. By indicating that the war would end soon, the author speaks about other
Russian newspapers that mentioned the policies of the unification of Armenia with Trans-Caucasia.
This unification would be a reward for the war losses and expenses that Russia had incurred. “Turkey
cannot pay this debt with money. The territories gained as a result of the war will compensate this.” If
Armenia were to unite with Russia, the country would return to the “land of flowers,” the same as the
taking of Yerevan by the Russians. In addition, if such a combination of events were to occur, the
Muslim Armenians would return to their old religions and thus reclaim their Armenian identity. In
addition, in the section on the second page of the newspaper, “Battle on the Stage,” the capture of
Kars is given in detail. All the people of Tbilisi welcomed the news with great enthusiasm. In fact, a
masquerade held on that day was deemed better after receiving this news, and the Russian anthem
started to play. I thank Megerditch Basma from Bibliothèque Nubar for providing a digital copy of
this issue and also Vağarşag Seropyan for Armenian translations.
166 Русская Старина [Russian Antiquity], no. 23, 1878, 70.
167 P. F. Brozh, I. Matiushin, Yu. Baranovsky and F. Gerasimov, Герои И Деятели Русско-Турецкой
Войны [Heroes and Figures of the Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878] (St. Petersburg, 1878), 99–107;
Christopher J. Walker, “Kars in the Russo–Turkish Wars of the Nineteenth Century,” in Richard G.
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information we have about this “mysterious” painting is from the Sargsyan and
Russian Antiquity articles. Despite Aivazovsky’s original painting being unknown, this
study and chapter present these two sources, with information from rare and important
documents concerning Aivazovsky’s engagement with the Russian–Armenian artistic
and intellectual world; it also demonstrates how the scarcity of accessible sources can
be partially provocative by turning one’s gaze toward visual representations of the
artist’s “multi-identity” character. It is worth mentioning that both Sargsyan and
Shahen Khachartryan’s monographs on Aivazovsky168 interestingly write that the hall
where the peace negotiations took place between the Ottoman and Russian empires at
the end of the war featured Aivazovsky paintings depicting a quiet sea at dawn and at
evening twilight. These paintings were probably selected from his Istanbul paintings,
which were generally commissions from Ottoman sultans.169 We also know that there
are three paintings by Aivazovsky glorifying the Ottoman navy. One, dated 1875,
depicted the renovated Ottoman fleet erected in front of Çırağan Palace [figure 31],
the other a nineteenth-century imperial residence in which the Balyan family was
responsible for the architecture. In the other two paintings depicting the Ottoman navy,
dated 1874 and 1875 [figure 32 and figure 33], Aivazovsky focuses on drawing the
ships only. Although one contains a city silhouette, these two paintings do not refer to
any architecturally symbolic place, like the Çırağan Palace. Both reveal a dynamic
atmosphere and its sometimes conflicting art-historical setting, including the long-
Hovannisian, ed., Armenians Kars and Ani, UCLA Armenian History and Culture, Historic Armenian
Cities and Provinces (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers), 217–220.
168 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 163; Khactrian, Aivazovsky: Well-Known and
Unknown.
169 He worked for the three Ottoman sultans and was decorated by these rulers: Abdülmecid,
Abdülaziz, and Abdülhamid II. For information on Aivazovsky’s reception by the Ottoman palace,
see: Semra Germaner and Zeynep İnankur, Constantinople and the Orientalists (Istanbul: Türkiye İş
Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2002); Pars Tuğlacı, Aivazovsky Türkiye’de (Istanbul: İnkılâp and Aka,
1983) and Elmon Hançer, “Saray Ressamı Ivan (Hovannes) Konstantinoviç Ayvazovski,” in 150.
Yılında Dolmabahçe Sarayı Uluslararası Sempozyumu, ed. Kemal Kahraman (Ankara: TBMM Milli
Saraylar, 2007), 360–376.
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established relationship of the artist with the Ottoman Empire, the sincere and, indeed,
lucrative relationship170 with the Ottoman Imperial Palace (especially his high regard
for Sultan Abdülaziz [r. 1871–1876]).171 This also concerns his background as a
creator of “anti-Ottoman” works, which mostly glorified the Russian army/navy
during the major Russo–Ottoman wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
(examined throughout this chapter) as well as praising the Ottoman navy and his strong
and long-standing connections with both Russian–Armenian and Ottoman–Armenian
intellectual elites. Thus, attempts to reintroduce traces and reflections of this
challenging and complex position of the artist and an understanding of his widespread
adoration shared in equal measure by Russian, Armenian, and Ottoman publics will
hopefully be helpful in rethinking Aivazovsky as not only one of the most significant
figures in the history of Russian/Armenian and Ottoman/Turkish art but also in
170 In an Ottoman journal, Mecmua-i Ebüzziya, the journalist Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey published an
interview with Aivazovsky about the relationship between the artist and Sultan Abdülaziz. It is an
important to document that shows the mutual relationship between the sultan and the artist: “I
[Aivazovsky] did not get the respect/compliments from any other ruler as I was given by Sultan
Abdülaziz. Yet, I have a precious gift from the sultan that I do not change with the treasures of the
world as my great honor. This is composed of four or five lines drawn by the sultan himself. I am an
artist and I saw many sketches in my life. However, even I could not imagine a painter who is able to
depict a small boat in a four- or five-line drawing.” I found this article in the personal archive of Taha
Toros, “Ünlü Deniz Ressamı Ayvazovski’nin Türkiye Hatıraları” [A Memoir of a Famous Seascape
Artist Ayvazovski on Turkey]. For a complete version of this article of Taha Toros see:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/84782785.pdf. Also, in his article published in Русская Старина
[Russian Antiquity], P. Karatygin mentioned Aivazovsky’s views about Sultan Abdülaziz and
confirmed Toros’s article: “Sultan Abdülaziz whose talent is undeniable supported my paintings
providing sketchs which are against the religious doctrines of Quran.” P. Karatygin, “Иван
Айвазовский и его 42 года художественной деятельности 1838–78,” [Ivan Konstantinoviç
Aivazovski and His 42 Years Artistic Life 1836–78] Русская Старина [Russian Antiquity], 21, 22,
23, (St. Peterburg, 1878) and 31 (St. Petersburg1881). This article is in volume 23 page 295.
171 In respect of tracking the fashion of illustrating history, the Ottoman Empire was no exception. The
second half of the nineteenth century, especially the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz, witnessed tremendous
changes in Ottoman history, culture, and art. Many painters, including Aivazovsky, were
commissioned to produce a complete history of the Ottoman Empire through the representation of
Ottoman glories on the battlefield. Mary Roberts, Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists, and
Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture (California: University of California Press, 2015); Fatma
Coşkuner, “Between Myth and History: Reflections of the European Battle Paintings in Nineteenth-
Century Ottoman Imperial Imagery,” paper presented to Fourteenth Annual Graduate Student
symposium in Nineteenth-Century Art, New York, 26 March 2017.
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embodying a moment when the two national traditions were in direct and productive
conversation.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered the visual representation of the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury
Russo–Ottoman naval wars from the vantage of Ivan K. Aivazovsky during
the nineteenth century from three perceptions: firstly, that the visual imagery of, and
related to, the sea is much more embedded and is far more significant, at many different
levels, in Aivazovsky’s art and Russian art and culture of the late-eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries than has been pursued in the art-historical study of this period. In
the years following 1856, the battles of Chesme, Navarino, and Sinop became
synonymous with Russian victory. Together, they represented a statement of total
martial dominance on the Black Sea that was illustrative of the Russian rulers’ wider
commemorative cultural patronage in the wake of the nineteenth-century Russo–
Ottoman wars. Starting from the reign of Catherine II, the rulers of Russia had
demonstrated their interest in the visual commemoration of the nation’s military
achievements as a way of supporting the development of contemporary art. Secondly,
that the visualization of the naval battles also formed a substantial means of
articulating the enormously important relationship between the nation and its empire,
a relationship that underwent profound changes during this time. And thirdly, that the
changes in the relationship of empire to nation were interwoven with changes in the
discourse of history and the historicization of Russia as a maritime–imperial figure
were represented in Aivazovsky’s works through the lens of national history. Through
considering a series of related works by Aivazovsky, I have attempted to draw
attention to the various aspects of these overriding concerns in order to explore them
not as monolithic narratives but as a multifaceted nexus of inter-related and sometimes
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competing and conflicting discourses, and to illuminate various ways in which
Aivazovsky’s “intersected” national identities on the threshold of the Russian Empire
were conceived in visual terms, articulating a wider set of cultural frameworks within
which those relationships could be seen to operate. In this respect, Aivazovsky’s battle
painting series should not at all be considered merely descriptive or commemorative.
On the contrary, they present dee and insightful commentaries on current and farreaching
national, socio-political issues in the Empire. The subject of the sea was
consistently at the heart of Aivazovsky’s artistic projects, both subjectively and in
terms of his place in the larger “imagined community” of the nation. Analyzing
Aivazovsky’s oeuvre from different perspectives explores increasingly and variously
the connections between Aivazovsky’s maritime subjects and the imperial contexts
deriving from Russia’s “relatively new” self-identification as an imperial maritime
nation. Thus, this chapter traced the fully-fledged construction of a visual history of
an imperial maritime nation, within predetermined nationalistic parameters, in the
series of naval battle paintings by Aivazovsky through the inclusion of his relatively
“unknown” pieces within a newly historicizing pictorial scheme representing both
Russian naval victories and the initial responses of Aivazovsky’s own origins, his
Armenian identity. In this scheme, the visual articulation of “painting history,” with
its inclusion of the artist’s eyewitness role, reveals a set of questions presented in
Aivazovsky’s paintings regarding the nature and function of history as a discursive
channel for articulating the relationship of empire to a nation.
Between the poles of two different, though intersected, visualizations of
Ottoman and Russian navies, therefore, I have offered a set of issues and instances of
Aivazovsky’s personification and his art that point to a much greater involvement
between Russian art and empire, and between art and the maritime, and the expression
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of his Armenianness, than has, until very recently, been acknowledged in art studies.
While understanding the expanded conceptual and disciplinary framework of his
creative field and individual position and contributions within the concept of the “sea”
must occupy a prominent position, we need to include Aivazovsky’s roots and
identities instead of being nationally marginalized or exclusive toward his historical
position in Armenian and Ottoman art.
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CHAPTER 3
God’s Storm: The Portrayals of Maritime Disasters and Shipwrecks
Introduction
The integral relationship between Aivazovsky’s artistic practice and the
broader maritime culture of the Russian Empire can be usefully demonstrated by a
contextual reading of his depictions of maritime disasters and shipwrecks. The
representations of shipwrecks demonstrate one of the major concerns of Aivazovsky’s
career: they promoted, within Russian’s cultural elite, that the sea was the nation’s
proper domain, the central geographical theater of the Russian naval forces, and one
of the main natural forces shaping their world. However, his dramatic representation
arguably went beyond then-standard ideas of the pictorial sublime to embrace both the
commercial potential of the subject and the mundane, yet tragic, reality of a maritime
nation. As the leading naval power in the Black Sea, Russia was able to establish a
global trade and extend its imperial networks; accordingly, maritime imagery became
more prominent as an element informing national and imperial identity construction
in particular and Russian popular culture in general.172 This was facilitated by the
accurate yet highly charged and dramatic depiction of the sea conveyed by Aivazovsky
and his depiction of the effect of moving water and reflected sun and moonlight, which,
all together, brought the artist his great success.173 He had experienced the ocean’s
savagery and man’s futile struggle on its surface, as well as its salvation. From the
172 Storms and shipwrecks had been rendered in painting in every period. For instance, the fury of the
sea must have been a real issue for maritime Venice: Tintoretto’s St. Mark Rescuing the Saracen is
perhaps the first shipwreck where the vast terror of the sea is realized. The Netherlands too had some
storms amongst their sea paintings. Brueghel’s famous Storm at Sea is one of the earliest attempts to
render the heaving of the deep rather than the lonely expanses of mid-ocean. In the seventeenth
century, wreck pictures become much more common. On the whole, Van de Veldes preferred
depicting calm or slightly swelling seas.
173 Edward Strachan and Roy Bolton, Russia & Europe in the Nineteenth Century (London: Sphinx
Fine Art, 2008), 22.
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mid-nineteenth century onward, the depiction of storms and shipwrecks was associated
with artists as diverse as the British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and the French
artists Claude Lorrain (1600–1682) and Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–1789), each of
whom was an important artistic model for Aivazovsky. While past and present masters
would always inform his art, Aivazovsky put a premium on personal experience and
disciplined observation of the natural world.
In this chapter, I would like to develop some of the issues raised by
Aivazovsky’s shipwreck depictions, particularly surrounding the representations of the
Baltic Sea and the Black Sea in Russian nationalist terms as arenas for heroic, maritime
Russian power and, conversely, the problematic dialectic between this nationalist
construction and the depictive existence of religious, mythical, and biblical certainties
that implicitly threatened the idea of social realism in a changing Russia.174 I shall be
especially concerned to show how this dialectic emerges in relation to visual
representation. In the Russian case, this was articulated with growing force as
maritime–imperial identity (especially over the Black Sea), and I shall focus on the
role of visual culture in developing this idea of national character. Significantly,
national identity was articulated by reference to—in terms of its distinction from—the
wider imperial sphere represented by the Siberian forests and the Caucasian territories.
174 Russia experienced a huge socio-cultural upheaval in the early 1860s. The liberation of serfs in
1861 was followed by a radicalization of younger intellectuals. Fourteen young artist in the Russian
Imperial Academy of Arts refused to take part in the annual gold medal competition in 1863,
primarily opposing the inflexible insistence of the Academy on historical painting as irrelevant to the
contemporary situation in Russia. Rejecting the Academy, however, also meant rejecting the tsarist
government as patron, and several of the artists who protested had to create their own exhibitions.
Later, in 1870, the Society for Travelling Exhibitions (the Wanderers) was founded, with the twin
goals of supporting an art that more honestly represented life in Russia as it was at the time and of
taking (this) art out of the urban centers and into the countryside—to the people—and thereby
producing a modern art for the nation. Valkenier, Russian Realist Art; Valkenier, “The Peredvizhniki
and the Spirit of the 1860s;” Sarabianov, Russian Art from Neoclassicism to Avant-Garde; David
Jackson, The Wanderers and Critical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Painting (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006); Blakesley, The Russian Canvas; Rosalind P. Blakesley and
Margaret Samu, eds., From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014).
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Furthermore, this sense of distinction and difference demarcated the maritime nation
from the wider imperial sphere of its maritime activity. It was represented most
tellingly through the trope of the idealization of the rulers and the Russian naval
victories, and was epitomized in the preternatural bodies of sailors/humans in distress.
This section particularly addresses how the tensions and crises surrounding the
cultural construction of the national maritime power of Russia over the Baltic Sea and
the Black Sea were played out through the iconography of shipwrecks, which both
provided the arena for heroic performance but also, in itself, enacted the ultimate
failure of heroic endeavor. I shall argue, therefore that the visual imagery representing
maritime disasters on the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea during the period of Russia’s
rise as a maritime empire while creating secure access to both seas can be understood
not only in relation to that specific conflict but more widely in terms of changing the
cultural emphasis from empire to an ideologically nuanced reading of a cultural
identity. The seascape portrayals may be interpreted as part of a historical discourse
and a narrative of Russia’s shift from land-based power to a maritime empire. To assert
the certainty of the maritime in this relationship, then I also challenge and question the
conventional binary distinction between land-based and sea-based territorial definition
of the Russian Empire. Similarly, the prevailing territorial concept of the Empire had
yet to be drawn up, although it was clear that Russia could not entirely become a
European entity, deprived of safe access to the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea,175 and
175 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sweden still had the strategically important Baltic
provinces of Ingria, Karelia, Finland, Estland, and Livland. Poland had ceded the eastern (left) bank of
the lower Dnieper. Russia’s greatest reward for the eighteenth century was the vast area of the Steppe
region, the Southern defense, and the northern Black Sea coasts. Such territories were crucial
strategically and economically to the establishment of Russia as a Eurasian empire and a major
European power. Moreover, Russia was able to view the prospect of its commerce and its naval force
being built via the Bosphorus and Dardanelles into the Mediterranean, which would allow it to avoid
its collapse and participate in a wealthy, lucrative Levantine market that replaced the trade in the
Eurasian continent in earlier centuries. For more information, see Hosking, Russia and the Russians,
184–195.
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the image of the maritime is almost, by concept, an image of displacement as it
discusses the “other areas” at a fundamental level—the areas of the sea, traditionally
considered as culturally and materially distinct from the surrounded regions of the
nation and its imperial territories.
The Heroic Ideal: Peter the Great as the Father of Modern Russia
“One can’t help but feel gratitude for the talent [of Aivazovsky], who doesn’t
forget to immortalize everything that could possibly be of interest to future generations
one day, because people die, and only names and deeds remain the people’s
memory.”176
The subject that impelled Aivazovsky to embark on this potentially very
lucrative venture was a celebrated contemporary survivor narrative set against the
backdrop of Peter the Great’s war with Finland. The Russian fleet, under the command
of the tsar himself, was returning from Sweden following the important naval victory
at the Battle of Vyborg in 1710. On the way back, the fleet was hit by a storm—a
notoriously commonplace feature of the Baltic Sea. The fleet was dispersed and many
ships lost. Peter I, sailing his yacht, risked his life, reached the coast, and started a
signal fire, which, like a lighthouse, showed the ships the way to a safe bay. A week
later, the fleet was able to deliver weapons, ammunition, and supplies the siege of
Vyborg, which soon after surrendered.177
Aivazovsky’s painting, Peter the Great at Krasnaya Gorka Lighting a Bonfire
on the Shore to Signal His Ships in Distress [figure 34], depicts this moment, with
Peter I dynamically directing proceedings in a defiant signal against the storm,
rearranging the fully depicted Russian fleet. This painting also related the storyline
176 The journal Panthéon notes Aivazovsky’s responsiveness to current events. Petrova, Ivan
Aivazovsky, 26.
177 Somewhat later, the victory was celebrated on the island of Kotlin, and this scene was repeated as a
theatrical performance, which the entire command of the young Baltic Fleet witnessed and
participated in. In the same year, on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, they began to install signal
beacons for the night passage of ships.
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specifically to the representation of seascape and its dialogue with other paintings and
genres. The expression of the tsar is achieved in a much more specific way than simply
a general merging of the two genres. For, while the main figure in the painting is
obviously an individualized portrait of the most recognizable person of the Russian
Empire, Peter the Great, Aivazovsky appears to have conceived this dialogue also
through reference to the classical and academic taxonomy of the “passions.” As a
professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Aivazovsky was probably aware of the
contemporary agreements dealing with the nature and artistic representation of the
passions through the expressions of the human face and head. What all these
agreements have in common is the fundamental belief, deriving from classical theories
of beauty, that abstract emotions and internal attitudes may be individually discerned,
precisely identified in the expressions of the face. Aivazovsky’s depictions (both of
Peter and the other figures castaways at sea) are, of course, are hardly specimens of
beauty. However, his representation of the characters in his painting, who wear a
variety of distinct expressions that involve both exaggerated facial distortion and
theatrical postures, surely responds to the prevalent artistic and aesthetic concern of
this period with establishing a taxonomic classificatory system for representing mental
states and the passions.
The hybridization, therefore, of seascape and history through the portraiture,
which, in one sense, marks out the painting’s Russianness and also its modernity, is at
the same time annexed to its claims to the unchanging academic ideal for history
painting, articulated through reference to the classical tradition of the theorization of
the passions, by which its heroic character could be both individualized and idealized,
rendered as frail and mortal, in a real life-and-death struggle with the sublime sea.
Importantly also, in view of the primacy assigned to the spectator’s embodied, this
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mechanism offers a legible means to enable the spectator’s sympathetic identification
with the sentiments represented in the scene. As such, the spectator may also be
projected as a member of the nationhood that the painting allegorizes in terms of
distinction, via the construction of self within the sphere of visuality, part of what Peter
de Bolla has termed “the education of the eye.”178
Aivazovsky was awarded with a professorship by the Academy;179 this painting
received a significant amount of attention, and in various ways, it has been argued,
shows a “patriotic affirmation.” The tsar commissioned Aivazovsky to fill the walls of
the Academy of Fine Arts with his marine paintings, and he opened his first exhibition
in the capital, St. Petersburg.180 The exhibition opened on February 26, with twenty
marine artworks exhibited in two halls of the Academy of Fine Arts. Within two
weeks, the exhibition conquered the public of St. Petersburg.181 If viewers had not
already been aware of it, then Aivazovsky’s painting would have made abundantly
clear the “new-born” colonial naval victory that formed the context for Aivazovsky’s
scene of stable and strong survival, the tsar. In the travel journal of Peter I, it is written
178 Peter de Bolla, The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape and Architecture in Eighteenth-
Century Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
179 Sargsyan, Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 100.
180 On February 23, the Academy’s Board published an announcement in the St. Petersburg
ведомости [The Record] newspaper: “Many art lovers who have not had the chance to visit the
workshop of our famous marine painter I. K. Aivazovsky have long expressed their desire to see their
new works. The Imperial Academy of Arts from the highest sovereign emperor ordered the
appointment of several halls for paintings by Aivazovsky in the Academy, where art lovers can see
from February 26 to March 8. Sargsyan, Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 98.
181 Young poet Apollo Maikov wrote about this: “Despite the mud and melting snow, crowds were
striving for Vasilevskiy Island, filling the halls of the Academy and various expressions of delight and
pleasure obviously showed that everyone was fully rewarded for their curiosity […] Thank you Mr.
Aivazovsky! Deciding to expose our works alone is a feat for which the artist must thank, we really
understand how much firmness is needed to defeat the petty fears and false shame imposed on the
artist the general opinion of his fellowships […] Finally, the southern species of Aivazovsky, who are
still excellent […] We, according to our extreme understanding, wanted to determine the peculiarity of
his talent; his sea and sky have nothing to say at all: this is the height of perfection, and since they are
a third-party thing in his paintings […] Thank you for the pleasure they brought to us.” A. N. Maikov,
“выставка картин Айвазовского в 1847 году,” [Aivazovsky’s Exhibition in the Year of 1847] in
отечественные записки [Notes of the Fatherland] 51 (1847): 166–176.
110
that on May 1, on Walpurgis Night,182 “a great misfortune happened, foodstuffs and
galleys almost all carried it into the great sea […]”183 This contemporary travel journal
on the wreck at Krasnaya Gorka certainly made the connection between the naval
victory and wrecks, using a rhetorical strategy of reversal of fortune that was
commonplace in shipwreck accounts. Also, the quasi-mythological and religious
vision of Walpurgis Night and bonfires as battling against witches then gives way to
an account of Aivazovsky’s display of “Russian courage (through the depiction of the
tsar)” in confronting the “horrid, turbid” scene. The disposition of the pictures in the
exhibition space would thus have made equally clear the visual dialogue of “patriotic
affirmation” that the viewer was meant to read between them. This dialogue was
further reinforced by Aivazovsky himself, whose other major submission for the 1847
exhibition was the depiction of the sea battle at Reval (with the Swedes again) [figure
35], which served as one of the cornerstones of patriotic heroism of Russian history.184
Also, its aesthetic dimension is perhaps the most immediately and unexpectedly—
striking aspect of Aivazovsky’s narrative. For it is intensely dramatic and full of
suspense, centering on the critical choice between the ships or the tsar, which comes
182 The night of Walpurgis is the eve of Saint Walpurga’s Christian Festival, an abbot of the eighth
century in France, and it is observed on the night of 30 April and the day of 1 May. This festival
commemorates the canonization of Saint Walpurga and its relics to Eichsttt, which took place on 1
May 870. The ways of celebrating vary from one nation to another and from one city to another. The
activities typically involve lighting the bonfire, choral singing, and a speech to honor the arrival of the
springtime, particularly in Sweden. Walpurgi fires are part of an early eighteenth-century Swedish
tradition. Farm animals were brought to graze in Walpurgis (Valborg), and bonfires were lit to scare
predators. For basic information on Walpurgis Night, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night.
183 https://www.rusmuseumvrm.ru/data/mediateka/ayvazovskiy
184 The painting depicts a battle during the Russo-Swedish War of 1788-1790. Enjoying significant
superiority, a Swedish squadron counted on destroying a part of the Russian fleet anchored in Reval
harbor. Warned of the Swedes’ approach, Admiral Vasily Chichagov placed his forces at anchor in
three lines, allowing him to fire accurately on the approaching Swedish ships. The Swedish fleet was
forced to withdraw after suffering large losses from the Russian artillery and its own unsuccessful
maneuvering. Aivazovsky recreates the historical event, depicting cannon-smoke-shrouded Russian
ships firing on the Swedish fleet with Reval in the background. Nikolai Sobko’s Encyclopedia of
Russian Artists includes “the Naval Battles with Swedes at Reval, Vyborg and Krasnaya Gorka”
among Aivazovsky’s works in 1846, with note that the paintings were commissioned by Tsar
Nicholas I.
111
almost exactly in the middle of the narrative and thus literally the pivot on which the
tsar’s story balances. This “human-interest” angle immediately involves the viewer’s
sympathy and both humanizes and dignifies the tsar and his crew, making even more
poignant Peter’s subsequent decision to risk his life and create the bonfire. Here,
therefore, is a demonstration of the potential of shipwrecks to be turned from disaster
into triumph and to confirm the devotion to duty (and hence to country) of both the
newly emerged Russian navy as a whole and the individuals comprising it.
Aivazovsky’s narrative neatly and skillfully serves the double function of recording
the details of the shipwreck for the Russian naval Admiralty and of parading the
heroism of its protagonists, including the tsar, Peter I. The former is essentially private
for Aivazovsky, or at least transacted within a narrowly confined section of the public
sphere (through the exhibition), while the latter operates at the most culturally open
level, through the painting’s new location: Tsar Alexander III bought this painting and
hung it on the walls of the Russian Museum.
In the case of Krasnaya Gorka, the heroization of Peter the Great was made
even more emphatic by the common knowledge that this campaign, after the storm had
subsided, became successful for setting out for Vyborg, which later surrendered
without a fight. This naval victory had both a national and cultural effect in depriving
Sweden of secure access to the Baltic and providing maneuvering capacity for the
Russians on the Black Sea after they secured the Baltic coasts. Within these much
larger public contexts, therefore, Aivazovsky’s choice, upon which his narrative and
subsequent rise to the status of hero depend, matches something of the character of the
paradigmatic choice presented in nineteenth-century Russian artistic culture.
112
Shipwrecks and Loss: The Disaster of Ingermanland
The coastline of Norway is littered with the wrecks of countless sailing
warships lost while making the perilous journey from their birthplace Arkhangelsk to
join the Baltic fleet at Reel or Kronstadt. Built in Arkhangelsk, the 74-gun ship of the
line Ingermanland got caught in a storm on her way to Kronstadt on August 31, 1842,
and broke up on the rocks in the strait of Skagerrak twenty miles from the coast of
Norway. Of the 900 men on board, 389 perished and 503 were rescued. Of the 389
who died in the tragedy, there were 21 women and 7 children accompanying their
husbands and fathers, who were, of course, officers and not seamen.185 Also, it is
important to emphasize that, in this vein, we might echo Linda Nochlin’s observation
of Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa concerning the absence of women.186 Within the
light of the evidence indicating a female presence, an unseen, but understood,
discourse of femininity underpins Aivazovsky’s construction of masculinity in all of
his shipwrecks.
In the case of The Shipwreck of Ingermanland [figure 36], the lure of the sea
is confirmed by the popularity of voyage narratives and shipwreck narratives, which
during Aivazovsky’s lifetime became a distinct literary sub-genre.187 The significance
185 Eduard Sozaev and John Tredrea, Russian Warships in the Age of Sail 1696-1860: Design,
Construction, Careers and Fates (Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2010), 231.
186 Linda Nochlin, “Géricault or the Absence of Women,” October 68 (1994): 45–60.
187 Famous for his books of the Russian Imperial Navy, the Russian writer Konstantin Mikhailovich
Stanyukovich also wrote sea tales of captains kind and cruel, of efficient first officers, of lieutenants
and careerists indifferent and idealistic, of boatswains terrible and harmless, with shipwrecks and
shipboard duels, female passengers and adventures in distant America as foils for the curse of the sea.
In a story from 1897, Stanyukovich wrote: “Submerge[d] in the water, the ship rocked on the waves.
Filled with people, the quarterdeck and bowsprit sank ever deeper into the brine. Now only the
mizzenmast rose above the surface, swaying over the sea and swarming from top to bottom with
human figures as with ants. Barely visible in the distance, fifteen miles away, was the thin line of the
Norwegian coast. Not a single sail which might give hope of aid could be seen on the horizon. Around
the half-sunken ship floated the wreckage of spars, boards, hatch covers, boarding ramps and two cutdown
masts. And hundreds of people on all of this. Their numbers decreased with each passing
minute. The weakest and most exhausted were taken by the unrelenting sea into its cold embrace.”
Konstantin M. Stanyukovich, Собрание сочинений в 13-ти томах [Collected Works in 13 Volumes]
(Moscow, 1897).
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of the details of Aivazovsky’s case, as well as the ramifications of the wreck of
Ingermanland into wider areas of cultural representation, can best be demonstrated by
considering them in relation to the general iconography of shipwrecks in nineteenthcentury
Russia, and, further, to the way this pertains to a range of articulated national
ideologies and discourses. This is not just a simple issue of documenting how
shipwrecks were employed as a metaphor for national political crises. Rather, it is to
investigate their more attenuated and indirect relationships to dominant concepts,
particularly of being a maritime power and imperial discourse. In this section, I choose
to focus on the disaster of the Ingermanland, not only because of its pervasive cultural
impact—being regarded as an event of national significance and presented across a
wide spectrum of media and genres from eyewitness reports, to poetry, to prints, oil
paintings (and even Tsar Nicholas I’s declaration that shared the public outrage)—but
also because of the ways in which they harness particular discourses surrounding
shipwrecks and the Baltic fleet. I concentrate them into an event that was regarded at
the time as a singularly significant calamity.188
As we have seen with Aivazovsky’s ambition for his painting of the loss of the
Ingermanland, the visual imagery of wrecks formed part of a more general moralized
category of maritime disasters. This offered speculative grounds for artists from both
marine and academic backgrounds to produce works that could more closely conform
to the demand for history painting—that the subject should be generally interesting
and thus appeal to universal spectatorship. Furthermore, these images, following the
increasing tendency toward melodrama, placed decreasing emphasis on the material
loss of the ship and its cargo, in favor of privileging the human element from a
perspective of empathetic, emotive sensibility. In the melodramatic quest, the
188 Sozaev and Tredrea, Russian Warships, 231.
114
shipwreck provided ample representational opportunities for the passion of duty. It
was an already ideal framing for the grand action that would provoke a virtuous
empathy, through which the viewer could gaze upon the loyal and heroic subject of
“maritime Russia.”
In this respect, the story of Ingermanland bears all the hallmarks of the
exemplary shipwreck narrative, and I dwell on it at length because of its pragmatic
status in encapsulating the complex and distinctive features pertaining to the status and
meaning of shipwrecks in nineteenth-century Russia. This subject thus meets,
improbably, all the aesthetic criteria and all the market factors for the creation of
successful history painting: improbably, because as many scholars have recently
explained, the mismatch between the ideals of history painting and the actualities of
the demands for art in Russia, where the market was overwhelmingly dominated by
the social realists [figure 37],189 was such that it was almost impossible to make a
living from pursuing the high ideals of history painting. The subject, being taken from
an actual event, therefore required less imaginative invention on the part of the artist
to adapt it to history painting. This twofold artistic appeal to “history” and “nature” is
189 On the other hand, for another of the important artistic figures of nineteenth-century Russia, a
member of the Wanderers, Ilya Repin (1844–1930), the sea functioned symbolically and purposefully.
In Wide World, “[t]he great swathe of white-flecked olive sea sweeps around, past, and almost over
the laughing young lovers obliviously half engulfed on the dangerous edge of a rocky ledge, over
which the foaming sea boils. The dark, choppy waves a few yards away, spume blown from their
crests, are menacing intimations of potential calamity to these carefree young people who have not yet
noticed something that Aivazovsky’s sailors well knew, that the world—the sea—is both pleasurable
and potentially deadly. Here, Repin deploys, not altogether successfully, impressionistic painterly
techniques and colorings. Where Aivazovsky’s painting is always representational, Repin’s
foreground rush of seawater is almost a smear of grubby green paint, which must be intended to
underline the ambiguity of the narrative. Who could really survive upright in such turmoil of water?
Who but this idealized young couple could survive dry and untouched in such circumstances? Here,
we have the sea underlining an allegory of young love triumphing, oblivious amid the tempest.”
https://www.russianpaintings.net/articles/russian_fine_art/russian_fine_art/the_russian_painters_of_w
ater. For more information on Repin, see: David Jackson, The Russian Vision: The Art of Ilya Repin
(Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2015), 169–172.
115
effected in Aivazovsky’s hybridization of history painting with the seascape genre and
corresponds with the artist’s deep knowledge and interests.
The shipwreck, the Russian naval fleet’s largest at the time, provoked a massive
response in society. The novelty depiction of the subject of a shipwreck correlated
directly to the massive contemporary increase in Russia’s global maritime and imperial
interests. This painting also enabled Aivazovsky to use visual rhetoric and create a
remarkable conversion of disaster into triumph. Not only is the loss of the
Ingermanland no longer a catastrophe, it is instead a reminder and inevitable symptom
of Russia’s “unrivaled greatness”: Russia’s rivals did not suffer shipwrecks to the
same extent. Yet again, and even more ironically, the more shipwrecks suffered by
Russia, the more “unrivaled” would its greatness be since that would be a positive
demonstration of its increasing hegemony on the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.
Victory of Man, Humanity, and Life: The Ninth Wave, Rainbow and The Wave
“In his storm, we sense rapture, we see that eternal beauty which strikes the observer
in any real, natural storm.”190
The Ninth Wave [figure 38], generally regarded as the most prominent work
by Aivazovsky, is a large painting depicting an image of a group of people adrift in
turbulent waters and placed within the sunlight of a golden setting. Painted at the age
of 33, it is typical of Aivazovsky’s mature Romanticism in art, subject matter, and
populist appeal. The Ninth Wave is a classic interpretation of shipwrecks, along with
190 Aivazovsky himself never denied that he used his own personal recollections and made use of his
imagination. Writing in 1861 in the magazine Вре́мя [Time], Fyodor Dostoyevsky compared
Aivazovsky’s work with that of Alexandre Dumas as both artists “produce a remarkably striking
effect: remarkable indeed, as neither man ever produces anything ordinary at all.” Rather than judging
him harshly for his creative thinking, Dostoyevsky liked Aivazovsky’s lively imagination. In other
words, no one can hope to understand everything about nature, nor even try to look at all of the
aspects of it during their short lives. Thus, the artist’s paintbrushes cannot keep pace with the
constantly shifting and never-ending characteristics of nature and is rendered useless in the process.
Natalya Kalugina, “Reporting Aivazovsky in 19th Century Russian Periodicals,” Tretyakov Gallery
Magazine 54 (2017): 111–120.
116
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa [figure 39], although not associated with a social or
political statement. Its title comes from the idea that waves occur in trains of nine and
surge in size to the ninth wave.191 Aivazovsky refers to Géricault’s pyramidal shape of
the survivors but has borrowed little else.192
The Ninth Wave, a Russian maritime custom, was a wave of dread to sailors,
for the wave was the killer. In the low forefront of the Ninth Wave, a small huddle of
sailors clings to the remains of a mast while a giant wave of fume is about to fall, while
another is constantly rising in the sulfurous light of the winter sun just breaking
through dark and terrible clouds. The viewer wonders which of the waves the “ninth
wave” is, since they all look just as dangerous. There can be no certainty. The mystery
of the fate of the sailors, in this endless mass of water, and the fear generated by the
color of the sky and the frightening waves, translucent in their peaks and black in
depth, produce what Edmund Burke193 termed “the Sublime,” a state in which the
191 Some nautical myths indicate that there are seven rather than nine, and while there are many facts
to support wave trains, real life is obviously not as typical.
192 We need to appreciate the historical context in order to understand the impact of the portrayal of
this single maritime loss in July 1816 off the west coast of Africa when actually such events were
relatively commonplace. The overwhelming and sublime feelings of Romantic art functioned to
produce a “tragedy” in this case against the background of a sequence of events begun by ineffective
guidance by naval captain Hugues de Chaumareys, who had been nominated for his post by the ultraroyalist
Minister of the Marina, Vicomte de Bouchage. This made of the wreck of Medusa a political
and a naval scandal that highlighted corruption in the Restoration rule and exposed the Royalist versus
liberal fault-line—which developed into a national controversy following the November 1817
publication of a survivors’ account from the rafts of physician Henri Savigny and geographer-engineer
Alexandre Corréard (the text of which constituted Géricault’s main source). The primary goals of
Savigny and Corréard were to blame for the shipwreck and illustrate the misfortune of the
commandants, who abandoned 150 troops, sailors, and official passengers on a forthcoming raft: only
15 of them survived at sea after nearly two weeks. For more information on Géricault’s Raft of
Medusa, see: Yvonne Scott, “Reconstructing the Raft: Semiotics and Memory in the Art of the
Shipwreck and the Raft,” in Framing the Ocean, 1700 to the Present, ed. Tricia Cusack (London and
New York: Ashgate, 2014); Patrick Noon and Stephen Bann, eds., Crossing the Channel: British and
French Painting in the Age of Romanticism (London: Tate Publishing, 2003); Darcy Grimaldo
Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002).
193 For idea of the Sublime, see: Edmund Burke, A Philosophical enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful, with an introduction and notes by Adam Philips (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990).
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emotions are completely stretched.194 The motive behind shipwreck production and
the use of wreck-related material is, therefore, subject to various interpretations. There
is, however, another degree of possible significance in terms of this debate; it explicitly
concerns the mechanism by which the spectator uses his creative and logical faculties
in front of his sublime object.
The Christian message, which deals with the posturing of the unafraid in
anticipation of wave coming up to greet them before they are able to see the cross, is
not as distinct as they would like. In terms of composition and palette, the Ninth Wave
exemplified the classical, academic art that Aivazovsky learnt and then imbibed in the
galleries and salons of the European capitals. It features his sense of melodrama at its
most febrile and communicates a certain magnificence in his impressive portrayal of
affect.
Rainbow [figure 40] shows survivors tossed in a violent stormy setting isle in
the background serves as a reminder that they are no longer safe and happy, as their
ship has sunk below the waves in the depth of the sea in the background. The
atmospheric and oceanic colors are muted and use a gentle, subtle pastel palette of
hues that morph and merge, generating a tone of exposed resignation in direct contrast
with The Ninth Wave’s overstated melodrama of two decades earlier. An almost
invisible rainbow tingles the light that flows from the right across the sky. The painting
as a whole gives the impression of a whirlpool. Its swirl of water, clouds, and sea pull
the eye towards the line of light between men and ship marking the lower part yet also
imagistic center of the “rainbow,” where, one senses, the storm may pass, sweeping
off to the left. In Judeo-Christian iconography, the rainbow is God’s covenant with
194 For more information about Russian painters of water and the water and its symbolism see:
https://www.russianpaintings.net/articles/russian_fine_art/russian_fine_art/the_russian_painters_of_w
ater.
118
mankind after the deluge, His pledge to never again lay the Earth waste thus. The fact
that Aivazovsky juxtaposes the rainbow with a wrecked mast and the evidence of the
shipwreck adds a further layer of complexity to this enigmatic late work. The ship’s
pathos of failure gives way to our awareness of the deep thrill that the sailors feel in
the moment.
The Wave [figure 41] is a continuation of sorts of the theme interpreted in
Aivazovsky’s most famous work, The Ninth Wave. Here, the format has become larger,
the palette colder and more reticent, the raging of the elements even more magnificent
and unrestrained, and the shipwrecked sailors’ situation seemingly more hopeless. The
theme of catastrophe, of the all-destroying elements returning the world to a state of
chaos, once again come to the fore. The struggle for life and the sashing of human
hopes are insignificant in the face of natural forces.
The Wave of 1898 breaks a series of barren and intensely physical seascapes
begun in 1881 with The Black Sea.195 This version returns to the artist’s old theme of
shipwrecked mariners but now consumed by all loss of hope. There is no sunlight
breaking through here, there is no rainbow, there is nothing to pray for, and there is no
sense of the storm subsiding and life clinging to some hope of rescue. Here, life itself
is being sucking out, swallowed by the unforgiving sea. Aivazovsky’s depiction of the
sky also forbids, appearing as an angry continuation of the ocean and thus oppressively
closing in on the scene of desperation. While the others cling to a fragile hope of saving
their lives, this character is obstinate and disheartened. The overriding motif in
Aivazovsky’s seascapes is the ocean rediscovering itself. The painter’s own vigorous
195 Aivazovsky wrote to Russian journalist, publisher and the editor of Но́вое вре́мя [New Time]
Alexei S. Suvorin: “All the paintings are already in Paris. There will be up to thirty in all, of which
only nine were painted three or four years ago, the remaining twenty in the last two years and several
have never been seen by anyone before. The largest is the 71/2 – arshin – wide Last Minutes in the
Ocean [The Wave], which is my best storm ever.” Sargsyan Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and
Materials, 253-254; Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 202.
119
contact with the painted surface appears to have characterized these late seascapes with
a physical strength that contrasts with its light, romanticized evocations of old land
and picturesque shores. “I am deeply convinced that my last picture of the Last Minutes
in the Ocean [The Wave] belongs to the best of my works, in which I manage to convey
all the experience of my long-term artistic activity. Therefore, I’d consider myself
happy if the painting became part of the public legacy.”196 Shipwrecks could be
understood to erase or equalize differentiation of rank and status: men and women,
black and white, master and servant, differences of gender, race, and class were leveled
in the face of the engulfing sea or ocean. As a consequence, shipwrecks, in one sense,
could offer a vehicle for the heroic representation of humanity regardless of their
status.
Once again, it is important to consider this painting as a kind of summation of
his marine subjects of the previous decades. The claim that Aivazovsky’s “Romantic
seascapes” had declined was a view shared by a number of scholars (add to that how
the changing taste of Tsar Nicholas II also supported this idea). As a means of
assessing the ongoing ambivalence of the status of painting, as well as its predictive
and retrospective qualities, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, I would like to
consider seriously the accusations leveled at Aivazovsky of “freezing in his time” and
Aivazovsky’s oeuvre as a whole. If a combination of creativity and destruction informs
the wrecks of Aivazovsky, moreover, then a similar mixture also structured
Aivazovsky’s approach to creating his own reputation, as well as fostering a Russian
school of painting. A number of factors combined in the nineteenth century to make
Aivazovsky’s seascapes particularly important to his developing career. First,
seascapes had become increasingly prominent as a means of negotiating and creating
196 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 202; 207.
120
Russian national and imperial identity. Second, these depictions, in an increasingly
competitive artistic environment, created considerable concern among aesthetic
theorists, who worried that the private demands of the marketplace197 might
overwhelm the public concerns of history painting. This placed an ambitious artist
such as Aivazovsky in a kind of double-bind, for he needed at once to strive to build
his own reputation in a combative marketplace while also attempting to serve the cause
of Russian art—art in general even (although, according to Rosalind Polly Blakesley,
he is relatively unknown in the West).198
Creating the Sublime: Storm at Cape Aya and Shipwreck
At the peak of the Romantic period, a lot of debate took place on the nature of
the sublime. Artists wrestled with the complexities of their interpretation when
attempting to achieve sublime effects. However, as I would like to show in this section
on shipwrecks, it is difficult to ignore the sublime when challenged. In this review of
the sublime subject-paintings displayed during this time at the Royal Academy, Martin
Myrone encourages us to think about the artistic dedication and the use of the sublime
as a primarily market-oriented business.199 He concludes that the sublime can
“probably best be described as a certain kind of effect which had more to do with
197 One of the most prominent art dealers of Aivazovsky’s time Pavel Tretyakov was interested in
Aivazovsky’s seascapes in general and shipwrecks in particular. For Pavel Tretyakov, see: S. P.
Botkina, Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov: Life in Art; V. P. Ziloti, In the House of Tretyakovs; Letters of
Artist to Pavel Tretyakov. Also, as Sargsyan mentions after the close of his exhibition of Paris
Aivazovsky returned to St. Petersburg to the President of the Academy and the Minister of the Court
with a proposal to present the Hermitage with his large canvas The Wave. The canvas was accepted
with gratitude, and as the Minister of the Imperial Court notifies, Tsar Alexander III expressed his
satisfaction. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 207.
198 Blakesley, The Russian Canvas, 218-219.
199 Christine Riding, “Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime,” in The Art of Sublime: Terror,
Torment and Transcendence, ed. Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (London: Tate Publishing,
2010) from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/chrstine-riding-shipwreckself-
preservation-and-the-sublime-r1133015, accessed 18 July 2020.
121
manipulating public and critical response than with attending to some pre-ordained
theoretical prescription.”200
As mentioned by Aivazovsky in a letter to the Academy of Fine Arts
Conference Secretary Pyotr Iseyev, the work Storm at Cape Aya [figure 42] was
painted in the summer of 1875 at the artist’s country estate Sheikh-Mamai in the
Crimea. Aivazovsky added in the letter: “I intend to donate this painting to the
Academy of Fine Arts as my best work.” Cape Aya is a thirteen-kilometer-long
promontory located southeast of Balaklava on the Crimea’s southern coast. The place
was always considered extremely dangerous during storms. For sailors in distress,
there was a double danger: the roiling waves ready to swallow up their ship and the
steep cliffs they could be dashed up against by the storm.
Aivazovsky created his most remarkable shipwreck in 1876 [figure 43].
Shipwrecks are, of course, the inventory of any seascape artist from Ludolf
Backhuysen to Claude-Joseph Vernet to Jean Pillement and Theodore Géricault, and
Aivazovsky had himself painted many.201 However, this image captures so sublimely
the stirring power of the remains of the ship’s crew, whose arms extended to helpless
watchers on the high ground, the pillar on which the boat is bound to be sunk. Much
like Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead [figure 44] from 1880, the large rock is named
for a selectively illuminated sunlight, turning the flying spray into a magical cloud
around its foundation. In reality, in his earlier Icebergs [figure 45] in 1870,
Aivazovsky used the same kind of lighting effect in which a huge, broken edifice with
mysteriously lit ice over a slow-moving three master is chosen for special illumination.
From the dark shadow of the foreground of Shipwreck, a floating mast rises from a
200 Martin Myrone, “The Sublime as Spectacle,” in Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at
Somerset House, 1780–1836, ed. David Solkin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 8.
201 Charles, Ivan Aivazovsky, 1067, Kindle.
122
storm, its jagged edge flowing seawater (Aivazovsky’s favorite visual device), while
in the gunwale harbor a doomed boat is filled by a storm, which will imminently grab
and hurl it on the large rocks.202
The two works present approximate proof of the type of dramatic effects and
devices expected of “sublime images,” such as sharp contrast in light and darkness,
battering winds and seas and struggling ships and human beings. Yet what effect the
proximity of the rocky coastline (i.e., dry land as a symbol of safety) has on viewers
of the paintings can be seen in Aivazovsky’s composition. For both paintings,
Aivazovsky was aware of the complex spectacle–spectator relationship and tried to
confuse, even problematize, this division by placing the edge of the mountains beyond
the confines of the framed canvas and into the spectator’s plane. And because many
seamen are depicted turning to or facing the mountains (i.e., gazing in the same
directions as the painting viewer), the artist is obviously attempting to trick us into
feeling, if only briefly, what they are experiencing. Are we shipwreck participants? Of
course, the sheer size of these paintings makes human suffering more visible and thus
more immediate and efficient than in most marine paintings. Nevertheless, how
Aivazovsky’s composition miniaturizes and obscures the shipwrecked forms physical
and emotional suffering. Can we, as observers, be submerged in the human sense of
an occurrence or scene if we are distanced from human presence?
Edmund Burke in the Philosophical Enquiry on pain, anguish, torment and
death as productive of the sublime indicates the desire for self-preservation:
“The passions which belong to self-preservation, turn on pain and danger; they
are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when
we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances; this
delight I have not called pleasure, because it turns on pain, and because it is different
enough from any idea of positive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I
202 Ibid., 1070, Kindle.
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call sublime. The passions belonging to self-preservation are the strongest of all the
passions.”203
Thus, the reason behind the usage and development of shipwreck-related
material is open to several interpretations. And there is another line of possible
interpretation here, one that directly relates to the mechanism by which the spectator
employs their creative and logical faculties before the sublime object. Generally
speaking, the fact that the shipwreck affords the spectator the luxury of an experience
of pure desperation in all-consuming demand of self-preservation without actually
having to face death or even anything dangerous at all may well be the reason why it
became adapted to the sublime in all its forms and was so frequently embraced by
artists preparing works for public consumption.204
The Biggest Shipwreck in History: Noah’s Ark
Aivazovsky’s choice for what might count as the biggest shipwreck in history
was a scene that was easily transferred to more strictly historical subjects. Indeed, The
World Flood [figure 46] provided an ultimate opportunity for this force of nature to
be displayed. Here, the canvas—the world—is vertically bisected by violent contrast
of light and shade, enacted as the Almighty in conflict with His own creation. The
humans, perhaps drowned or still alive, are as statues, the broken remains of stone on
the huge, half-submerged rocks desolated by the deluge. The whole planet is engulfed
in a war that is physically frozen, a temporary halt to this horrific natural event—a
Faustian moment, indeed not of joy but of sorrow. Even in the sense of biblical themes,
the artist chose those that helped him to paint water. Struck by God’s wrath, people
and animals throw themselves off the cliffs, the artist’s habitual mise-en-scène taking
203 Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, 97.
204 Riding, “Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime.”
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on new connotations here, reminiscent of Gustave Doré’s engravings [figure 47] of
biblical scenes.205 Aivazovsky’s choice offers a complex variant upon this aesthetic
model, as a Russian–Armenian marine painter who has fulfilled his duty to create a
biblical story as a painter finally chooses to depict this story through the lens of the
story of the Noah’s Ark (it could be interpreted as a shipwreck) and its ground on the
mountain of Ararat (see Chapter IV for a detailed analysis on Mount Ararat and
Aivazovsky’s Armenian identity) because “the being of good Christian and Armenian
prevailed.” But this, we are led to understand from that narrative, from his own words
on the subject, and from the significant symbolic meaning of Ararat for the Armenian
nation, was self-expression in the ultimate interest of the Armenians, via a biblical and
a painful ordeal that could be ready to spur to public sympathy. Back in November
1862, responding to a letter from Prince D. I. Dolgorukov, Aivazovsky wrote: “I am
delighted now with my painting The World Flood.” I almost finish it, and she, I can
safely say, is my best work.”206 In 1864, Aivazovsky opened a solo exhibition in St.
Petersburg, where he presented The World Flood along with eight other paintings
created in the same year.
The huge canvas made a strong impression on art lovers and the public of the
capital. The artist depicted not just the sight of the storm, but a picture with a biblical
storyline: Mount Ararat, people and animals scrambling at its summit, fleeing from the
flood. The canvas depicts an episode of the greatest tragedy of mankind. On the left
side of the canvas, on the rocky top of the mountain, a lot of people and animals are
sheltered, clinging to the stones, striving upward to escape from the frenzied waves of
205 For more information on Gustave Doré, see: Eric Zafran, Robert Rosenblum, and Lisa Small,
Fantasy and Faith: The Art of Gustave Doré (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
206 Sargsyan, Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 135. Aivazovsky painting The World
Flood was presented at the exhibition of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1864. Tsar Alexander II
later purchased it, and it has since been moved to the Hermitage Museum.
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the flood. But the waves follow, capturing many people and animals in their whirlpool.
Hanging over the water, the black sky with gloomy clouds further underlines the
tragedy. As always, the hopelessness of the position somewhat eases the bright light
of the sun, making its way in the corner of the upper part of the picture, cutting clouds
and illuminating individual parts of the image. Clinging to the sharp rocks, the father
of the family, holding his hands to the sky, prays for salvation. Elsewhere in the
picture, the woman, dying, prostrated herself next to the body of a tiger, and the
monkey, with her young, in fear, runs to the top of the mountain. Very expressive in
the foreground of the canvas are people in a state of horror, as well as elephants, bears,
and other animals. The fear is so great that the animals, running past people, do not
even harm them. One may recall the impressive painting by Karl Bryullov, The Last
Day of Pompeii, where there are similar images: the priest of the church, hiding social
values under his arm, runs away when people on the verge of death help each other.
Depicting these aspects of life, Aivazovsky was far away from the religious
interpretation of the Bible.
Sea foam appeared once more in Aivazovsky’s work. The image depicts a very
primitive force, a tragedy that is more uncontrolled than the tale of the Sacred Letters.
The emphasis is on the sea, which challenged even the beauty and dignity of cruelty.
There is a “victory over all things” in the huge shaft of light focusing our attention on
the dreadful scene of The World Flood. But it directs us to the overwhelming sense of
the terrible waves that will spare nothing that lives. Remorselessly, they follow the
unchanging law of their element, pitiless and relentless.
We are attracted by the enticing factor of hypnosis. People die deep down in
the sea: the whole spectrum of colors indicates the catastrophic outcome, the lack of
redemption. In the magnificent painting, The World Flood, Aivazovsky depicts the
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misery of a man left trapped in a horrific catastrophe. It is humanity’s only chance to
be cleansed and the only way to pursue the creator’s salvation and grace. The artist
also portrays the sea as a common framework of nature and history: water vanished
from sins and obscurities, but in spite of darkness and sorrow, the masterful dimension
is a glimmer of hope and confidence. For the painting does suggest a way out of the
darkness and into the light and goodness apparent in the bright colors on the left of the
canvass. Aivazovsky here conveys a real sense of life and deep emotion, for there is
hope, but one for which we must be truly humbled.
In this respect, it is worth remembering that, if the story’s moral Christian
dimension was picked up later on, at the beginning of his career Aivazovsky was alert
to its artistic potential, no doubt also in part because of its moralizing dimension:
Chaos: The Creation [figure 48] (created in his early twenties when Aivazovsky
domiciled in Rome, following a fellowship from the Imperial Academy in St.
Petersburg to study abroad) was commissioned by Pope Gregory XVI, who had it hung
in the Vatican, in spite of its dispute over the abstract image of a divine presence in
the Vatican. In this regard, the famous nineteenth-century Russian novelist, Nikolay
Gogol wrote: “Your Chaos caused a chaos in the Vatican.”207 Clearly, the chaos to
which the title of the painting refers comes from God creating the universe, represented
here as an act of forcing the natural elements to submit to divine will and taking it from
them.
In Chaos: The Creation, the upper area of the painting shows how an artist
wishes to utilize his creativity while taking advantage of nature’s tendency to produce
works of art, which suggests a story, especially with regards to this type of art, and the
main idea behind his romantic devotion is not begets that Aivazovsky has to steer it.
207 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 48-49.
127
Chaos: The Creation may be interpreted as indicative of his belief in the advancement
of marine art through poignant references to the past or references to biblical and
classical themes. It is quite possible that, through the symbolism of the waves,
Aivazovsky attempted to explore, for the first time, the issue of fallacious hope and
the possibility of catastrophe at sea.
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that the visual representation of shipwrecks assumed
wide-ranging applications and meanings for nineteenth-century Russia, particularly
when treating the virtue of humanity, which occupies a disproportionate place in the
shipwreck iconography of Aivazovsky. As such, this wider iconography provides a
deeper cultural context for understanding the nuances of meaning in his epic treatment
of heroic naval disaster in The Wave and Rainbow. However, it is also important to
attend to the differences between the depiction of commercial vessels, such as in the
case of the wave series, associated especially with the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea
and what they entail, and that of the Ingermanland and Peter I, a naval ship active in
the theater of war in the Baltic, despite their shared status as loaded images of maritime
disasters. In the first place, Aivazovsky’s prominent inclusion of Tsar Peter I might be
alerting us further to the “absence of prominent figure” in later paintings. The
unnoticeable figurative representations of his work both highlight the spiritual
dimension of shipwrecks as a “leveler” for mankind and, at the same time, emphasize
inspired trust in the triumph of man, humanity, and life.
In the second place, therefore, they both articulate the relationship between
empire and nation in rather different ways. The discourse of and around shipwrecks,
as exemplified by these images and the commentaries on them, was fundamentally a
discourse, albeit generalized and elliptical, on nationhood, insofar as shipwrecks could
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be both symbolic of the nation’s military, commercial and political conditions and also
represent a particular, actual circumstance in which the whole nation might have an
interest. There is a third sense of submergence in relation to the analysis of shipwrecks
that can be brought into play here, with particular reference to religious history. It is
worth noting in this context that the theme of the shipwreck, with its attendant
associations of either salvation or divine retribution by reference to the biblical deluge,
was regularly employed in this period in the visual and literary rhetoric of national
campaigns.
Through considering a series of related case studies, this chapter, turning to the
Baltic Sea and the Black Sea as the primary arena of interest, considered the various
ways in which the maritime nation was increasingly defined, through imperial
maritime imagery in terms of difference from the imperial sphere to which it was
commercially, religiously, and militarily wedded. Thus, the figure of national heroism,
typified by Peter the Great in Krasnaya Gorka, was constructed in terms of masculine
triumph in adversity, displacing the complexity of evil in the rise of the imperial power
that both created the disasters for the Russian people but provided the material context
for the ruler’s nationally celebrated act of heroism. On the cusp of this tension between
empire and nation were, mercantile organizations, whose dominant association in
maritime imagery with the nemesis of shipwrecks pointed to the delicate balance in
the discourse on empire between national commercial enterprise and its damaging
pursuit of wealth and depictions of ordinary humans (i.e., sailors) pitched quite literally
between empire and nation. This was both in physical and ideological terms (and in
some examples through the religious connotations), whose visual representation brings
into question the construction of the national naval hero presented in Aivazovsky’s
works.
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130
CHAPTER 4
The View from Ararat: The Articulation of Aivazovsky’s Armenian Identity
Introduction
Considering the distinction between memory and myth in his article,
“Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity,” Duncan Bell states that
“the careless employment of term ‘memory’ results not only in … confusion but also
can obscure the phenomenon through which “collective remembrance an actually run
against the grain of the dominant narrative (or ‘governing mythology’).” Bell seeks to
draw distinctions between memory and myth—he asserts that memory is only
experiential and that it enters into the communal conception of the past through
mythologizing in a space known as the “mythscape.” By pursuing the new
“mythscape” conception of Duncan Bell— “the temporally and spatially extended
discursive realm in which the myths of nation are forged, transmitted, negotiated, and
reconstructed”208—the first part of this chapter explores the role of the Ararat209
landscape in the formation and reconstruction of Aivazovsky’s Armenian national
identity from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of his life.
208 Duncan Bell, whose work I have employed in my approach to the Armenian symbolic narratives
and their lucrative relation with Aivazovsky, cautioned against the accuracy of the term “historical
memory,” historians used to employ the phrase previously employed by him. Duncan S. A. Bell,
“Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity,” British Journal of Sociology 54, no. 1
(March 2003): 65, 70-1.
209 In his book Crowds and Power, German author Elias Canetti argues that neither language nor
territory nor history is sufficient to constitute what, today, we call “national identity.” A national
“crown emblem” is required. Canetti goes on to show how European nations possess one emblem in
particular through which a common sense of national identity is voiced. In the case of England, for
example, it is the sea; it is the forest for the Germans; while in France, it is the Revolution. One may
debate the accuracy of Canetti’s comments on national mass symbolism in these cases, but this
approach does enable a (geographical and religious) positioning of Ararat symbolism in Armenian
national identity and afford an (ideological) reading of Aivazovsky’s Ararat images that differs from
that given in conventional landscape histories. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart
(New York: Continuum Publishing, 1962), 169-174. By attempting at establishing meaningful links
between “nature” and culture, Oliver Zimmer also utilizes Canetti’s “crowd symbol” and examines the
Alps as significant factor in search of the authenticate the Swiss nation. Oliver Zimmer, “In Search of
Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation,” in Comparative
Studies in Society and History 40, no. 4 (October, 1998): 637–665.
131
Ararat is historically linked to Armenia, although it lies beyond the boundaries
of the modern Republic of Armenia.210 It is widely regarded as the country’s key
national emblem. The representation of Ararat, usually portrayed in a nationalizing
voice, is pervasive in everyday material culture in Armenia. These terms— “national,”
“modern,” and suchlike—of course themselves have histories; as throughout this
work, I read modern definitions back into cultures that originally did not include them.
I highlight my use of these words to emphasize both the importance of a historian’s
choice and the independence of the historian. Imperial, national, geographical,
transnational, and local are, among other things, matters of scale, and scale, as I am
using it throughout my dissertation [mainly discussed in the Introduction and Chapter
I], is largely a spatial category. Space is socially produced, a human geography, as
elucidated by Henri Lefebvre.211 Every society, every means of production, creates
space. We should look at Ararat as the most famous national emblem of Armenians,
in the sense of Lefebvre’s space as a socially formed relationship, a connection
between things and see its importance to history. Ararat as national symbol did not
replace but rather complemented history; the national past and (or rather) its popular
memory was closely intertwined with the Ararat landscape and (or rather) its
representation.212
210 M. Wesley Shoemaker, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States 2014-2015 (Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 203. Shoemaker indicated that “Mount Ararat [is]
traditionally associated with Armenia.” and Christopher Walker, Armenia: Survival of a Nation
(London: Croom Helm, 1980), 11. Walker wrote that “Mount Ararat [is] closely identified with
Armenia throughout her history.” In his book, Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History,
Ronald Grigor Suny traces the cultural and social changes and interventions which in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries produces a new sense of Armenian nationality. Ancient and specific
conceptions merged in common imagination with experience of scattering, genocide and
reconstruction in Transcaucasia to create an Armenian nation. Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Toward
Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
211 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2009).
212 For getting information about how the Mount Ararat is defined as both a spatial and religious
category in the history of Armenia, see: Armen Petrosyan, “Biblical Mt. Ararat: Two Identifications,”
Comparative Mythology 2, no. 1 (December 2016): 68-80. Alternatively, to know how Ararat is
receipted in Turkey see: Özlem Köksal, “Past No-So-Perfect: Ararat and Its Reception in Turkey,”
132
This chapter begins from these assumptions, first looks at how ideas developed
in terms of geography and cultural characteristics, and providing a context for the study
of the relationship between land/seascape and national identity. It then differentiates
the historical stages in which the relationship between the Ararat landscape and the
Armenian nation has been established. This conceptualization of the relationship
between Aivazovsky and Armenian depictions could be called his “nationalization of
nature.”213 Characteristic here is the projection of imagined national pasts onto a
significant land/seascape in order to lend Armenian national identity a continuity and
distinctiveness.
Although actually sited outside the borders of modern Armenia, Mount Ararat
is historically associated with the nation, it is the “holy mountain” of the people and
central to pre-Christian mythology as the home of the gods. While the adoption of
Christianity led to decline in the pagan mythology linked to worship of the mountain,
the geographical center of ancient Armenian kingdoms, Ararat, in many respects, has
remained widely considered the country’s prominent patriotic symbol. In the Romantic
nationalism of the nineteenth-century, when Armenians lived in empires of the other
(especially Ottoman, but also Persian and, to a lesser extent, Russian), Mount Ararat
symbolized the historic Armenia as symbol of the imagined nation-state. Thus, in a
letter dated 1 October 1861, Armenian poet Mikayel Nalbandian,214 witnessing Italian
Cinema Journal 54, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 45-64. Following the Armenian film director Atom Egoyan’s
2002-released movie called Ararat, Özlem Köksal examines the problematic reception of Ararat in
Turkey, investigating both the film and the coverage in the media, as well as academics’ arguments,
which have become quite controversial in regards to it.
213 Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity.”
214 Mikayel Nalbandian, writer, activist, and revolutionary democrat, was born in Nor Nakhijevan.
Collaborating with the leaders of the Armenian revival movement, including Stepan Voskanian (1825-
1901), editor of the biweekly review Arevmutk (Occident), in Paris, and Harutiun Svachian (1831-
1874), editor of Meghu (Bee), in Constantinople, Nalbandian promoted Armenian revolution, cultural
nationalism and agrarianism influenced by the Enlightenment and the Italian unification. His long
travels through Europe and in Eastern and Western Armenia allowed him to establish contacts with a
number of illustrious people. He also participated in the underground organization Земля и воля
(Land and Liberty) with Nikolai Chernyshevsky. He was a passionate revolutionary and certainly took
many risks. After that letter addressed to Harutiun Svachian, he was arrested by the tsarist government
133
unification, mused: “Etna and Vesuvius are erupting; is there any smoke left in the old
volcano of Ararat?”215 Levon Abrahamian, an ethnographer, remarked that Ararat is
physically present for Armenians in reality (there are many Erevan houses and
settlements in the Ararat plain), as well as symbolically (e.g., on Armenia’s coats of
arms), and culturally (e.g., in architectural depictions).216
The second phase of this chapter considers the “atrocity”217 image:
Aivazovsky’s visual responses to the Armenian massacres targeting the Ottoman
Armenians during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1908) between 1894 and
1897.218 The “atrocity” images consist of five surviving images by Aivazovsky, four
of which—including two engravings of sketches reproduced in the massive illustrated
Russian-language tome Братская Помощь в Турции Армянам [Fraternal Help for
the Suffering Armenians in Turkey —hereafter cited as Fraternal Help]219—were
compiled and edited by the Moscow-based Russian–Armenian reformist and lawyer
Grigor Djanshiev (1851-1900).220
and imprisoned in St. Petersburg (1862-1865) and banished to Kamyshin, in Saratov, where he died in
1866. Hacikyan, The Heritage of Armenian Literature, 290-291. For more information on Nalbandian
see: Sarkis Shmavonian, “Mikayel Nalbandian and Non-Territorial Armenian Nationalism,” Armenian
Review 36, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 35-56.
215 Hacikyan, The Heritage of Armenian Literature, 292.
216 Levon Abrahamian, “Dancing around the Mountain: Armenian Identity through Rites of
Solidarity,” in Caucasus Paradigms: Anthropologies, Histories and the Making of a World Area, ed.
Bruce Grant and Lale Yalçın-Heckmann (Berlin: Lit Verlag; London: Global Distributer, 2008),
167-188.
217 To see the recent publication about this subject: Vazken Khatchig Davidian, “Image of an
Atrocity.”
218 For an introduction on this massacre, see: Christopher Walker, “From Sasun to the Ottoman Bank:
Turkish Armenians in the Mid-1890s,” Armenian Review, vol. 31, no. 3-123 (March 1979): 228-264;
Christopher Walker, Armenia: Survival of a Nation (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 136-176; Robert
Melson, “A Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894-1896,” Comparative Studies in
Society and History, vol. 24, no. 3 (July 1982): 481-509; Arman J. Kirakosian, ed., The Armenian
Massacres, 1894-1896: US Media Testimony (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004); Arman
J. Kirakosian, ed., The Armenian Massacres, 1894-1896: British Media Testimony (Dearborn, MI:
University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2008).
219 Grigor Djanshiev, Братская Помощь в Турции Армянам [Fraternal Help for the Suffering
Armenians in Turkey], 1st ed. (Moscow, 1897), 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1898). I would like to thank the staff
of National Library of Russia at St. Petersburg’s Rare Collection to organize access to the originals of
both editions.
220 Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity,” 42.
134
Heeding calls by Constantinople Patriarch Maghakia Ormanian for funds for
the urgent provision of shelter and food for the thousands of orphaned children221 in
the aftermath of the massacres, Fraternal Help was initiated, edited and published by
Djanshiev and remains uniquely impressive in terms of its place among Russian–
Armenian responses to the massacres.222 Although Vazken Davidian’s recent
publication provides a detailed interpretation of these sources, this chapter presents
these visual responses as well as personal correspondences of Aivazovsky as rare and
significant documents of Russian–Armenian artistic and intellectual engagement with
Armenian national identity. The documentation of these unique works provides a
genuine understanding of how Armenian victimhood was perceived by Russian–
Armenian intellectuals, including artists. It is also important to demonstrate that these
rare sources can be helpful in turning one’s gaze toward the more critical and more
integrated visual representations of Russian–Armenian artists and considering them in
relation to the increasing development of distinctive national identities.
The Nationalization of Nature: Depictions of Mount Ararat
I went out of the tent into the fresh morning air. The sun was rising. Against
the clear sky one could see a white-snowcapped, twin-peaked mountain. ‘What
mountain is that?’ I asked, stretching myself, and heard the answer: ‘that’s Ararat.’
What a powerful effect a few syllables can have! Avidly I looked at the Biblical
221 Nazan Maksudyan, Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 2014), 132-136. According to sources, receipts of the two editions were
approximately 100,000 rubles transmitted by the Russian Ambassador to the Patriarchate of
Constantinople and helped to establish 12 orphanages across areas of massacre: see Davidian, “The
Figure of the Bantoukhd Hamal of Constantinople,” 6.
222 Ibid. The 1898 edition runs to 920-plus pages, divided into three parts: Introduction (24 texts
including the forewords of both editions and reviews of first edition), Part I (largest section with 74
texts including scholarly essays on Armenian history, literature, music, theatre, architecture,
archaeology, etc.); Part II (comprising of 25 reports, essays, articles, original works and translations
on the current situation in Ottoman Armenia and the recent Massacres, with some 130 other texts, 170
images, and contributions by many representatives of Russian literature academia, and sciences. It is
worth noting that the volume received universal acclaim in the Russian Armenian and Ottoman
Armenian press outside the Ottoman Empire.
135
mountain, saw the ark moored to its peak with the hope of regeneration and life, saw
both raven and dove, flying forth, the symbols of punishment and reconciliation.”223
We may find different ways to construct a symbolic relation between a national
community and a particular landscape.224 In the Ararat-Armenian relationship, popular
tales and legends, folk memories, and supposed national virtues are projected onto a
specific landscape for the continuous, characterizing elements of national identity. As
a way of conjoining landscape and nation, the discourse of the “nationalization of
nature”225 came into use in Aivazovsky’s depictions of Armenian natural national
symbols.
It is supported by the verse of the eight chapter of the Book of Genesis (Genesis
8:4), after the flood, Noah’s Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. That verse
does not state that the Ark landed on Mount Ararat but on the “mountains of Ararat.”226
Ararat was the Hebrew version of the name—not of the mountain but nearby land of
the mountain, its ancient Armenian home. Most scholars and Bible historians believe
that Ararat, Armenia’s geographical counterpart, denoted the wider area rather than a
mountain today known as Ararat. Mount Ararat is still considered the traditional
location of the resting place of Noah’s Ark. Therefore, it is called the “biblical”
mountain. Of note here is that the theme of the “Mountains of Ararat” could refer to
any part of the country’s mountain mass.227 In this respect, Mount Ararat is not only a
223 In his Journey to Arzrum, the celebrated Russian poet Alexander S. Pushkin recounted his travels
to the Caucasus and Armenia at the time of Russo–Ottoman War of 1828-39. Alexander S. Pushkin, A
Journey to Arzrum, trans. Birgitta Ingemanson (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1974), 50.
224 Oliver Zimmer, “Forging the Authentic Nation: Alpine Landscape and Swiss National Identity,” in
Modern Roots: Studies of National Identity, ed. Alain Dieckhoff and Natividad Gutiérrez (New York:
Routledge, 2001), 95-117.
225 Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity,” 643-45; Eric Kaufmann and Oliver Zimmer, “In Search
of the Authentic Nation: Landscape and National Identity in Canada and Switzerland,” Nations and
Nationalism: Journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism 4, no. 4 (1998):
483-510.
226 https://origins.swau.edu/papers/global/noah/eng/index.html.
227 Mount Ararat itself is still assumed by Christians to be the biblical mountain, notwithstanding the
fact that six other landing places have been proposed. Richard James Fischer, Historical Genesis:
From Adam to Abraham (Lanham; MD: University Press of America, 2008), 109-111; Vahan M.
Kurkjian, A History of Armenia (New York: Armenian General Benevolent Union of America), 2;
136
symbol of nation, but also a symbol of church (or at least the sacred element of church)
and family. A special relationship was established between God and the land of
Armenia through Noah. Since all living things, except the inhabitants of the Ark, were
destroyed by the flood, Armenia provided the propagation of mankind and, in a
symbolic sense, served the kinship role as progenitor.228
European travelers could find Ararat depicted in their books, including those
of many British travelers, who visited the area in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. A French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort,229 Scottish artist and
diplomat Sir Robert Ker Porter,230 [figure 49] Baltic German naturalist and traveler
Friedrich Parrot,231 [figure 50] British academic and historian James Bryce,232 and
British traveler H. F. B. Lynch,233 [figure 51] particularly in connection with the
changing discourse on the relation of “culture and imperialism,” showed specific
interest in this geography and joined a voyage of exploration, surely seeing it as an
unexpected opportunity to further their career.
In 1875, Aivazovsky painted a remarkable landscape known as Araks River
and Ararat [figure 52]. Long before Aivazovsky painted the work, Scottish artist and
diplomat Sir Robert Ker Porter wrote about the same scenery:
A vast plain, peopled with countless villages; the towers and spires of the
churches Echmiadzin, arising from amidst them; the glittering waters of the Araxes,
Lloyd R. Bailey, “Ararat,” in Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Watson E. Mills and Roger Aubrey
Bullard (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1992), 54.
228 Ingrid Poschmann O’Grady, “Ararat, Etchmiadzin, and Haig (Nation, Church, and Kin): A Study
of the Symbol System of American Armenians” (Ph. D. diss., The Catholic University of America,
1979), 98.
229 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, A Voyage into the Levant (London: Printed for D. Browne, 1718).
230 Sir Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, etc. during the
Years 1817, 1818, 1819 and 1820 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1821-1822),
181-186.
231 Friedrich Parrot, A Journey to Ararat, trans. William Desborough Cooley (London: Longman,
1845).
232 James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, being notes of a vacation tour in the autumn of 1876
(London: Macmillan, 1877).
233 H. F. B. Lynch, Armenia, travels and studies: With 197 illustrations, reproduced from photographs
and sketches by the author, numerous maps and plans, a bibliography, and a map of Armenia and
adjacent countries (Beirut: Khayats, 1967).
137
flowing through the fresh green of the vale; and the subordinate range of mountains
skirting the base of the awful monument of the antediluvian world. It seemed to stand,
a stupendous link in the history of man, uniting the two races of men before and after
the flood. But it was not until we had arrived upon the flat plain, that I beheld Ararat
in all its amplitude of grandeur.234
Aivazovsky placed Mount Ararat clearly in the background of his canvas,
along with its valley, lending a rigid symmetry to the composition. The mountain,
snowcapped and twin-peaked, dominates the painting, holding the blue sky above and
the gray line of the River Araks below. Although depictions of the monastery of
Echmiadzin235 and the fortress were visible in the drawings of European travelers,
Aivazovsky chose to omit both these and any figurative representation. In fact, the
only moving or temporary thing in the entire composition is the river of Araks through
the valley to the skirts of the mountain. Aivazovsky’s 1875 Araks River and Ararat
has none of the “iconographic fragments” of his Armenian national-identity; on the
contrary, it depicts a deep acalm, with Ararat as a unifying and sublime symbol, devoid
of any signs of political messages. Aivazovsky depicted Ararat was an idyllic soil
capable of nurturing a natural concept of straightforward, pure character, along with
that of free thought and liberty. The natural beauty of the ancient Armenian territories
reflected a historical and political merit and the patriotism of the Armenian people; it
equated to freedom itself. Regardless of their geographical, linguistic, cultural, or
234 Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, 182.
235 Echmiadzin, still the center of the Armenian church, was established by St. Gregory the Illuminator
around 301 A. D. Gregory, subjected to torture and confined to a pit thirteen years, finally managed to
convert the King to Christianity. Gregory is reported to have been a vision of a flood of light near the
king’s palace and to have been told a to build a church on the spot. Although the Patriarchal See has
been moved in the course of Armenian history, Echmiadzin has remained as sacred spot and from the
fifteenth century again resumed its place as the center of the Armenian church. So, Echmiadzin’s link
to the nation/sate is a very strong one. Poschmann O’Grady, “Ararat,” 97-8. Aivazovsky also depicted
Gregory the Illuminator. In his painting, Grigory the Illuminator Consecrates the Palace where the
Echmiadzin was Layed, he represents the moment of laying of the Echmiadzin cathedral. Two years
after baptism of Armenian people in 301 A. D. the cathedral was built in the neighborhood of Erevan.
All the successors of the Grigory were called Catholicoses and their residence was in Echmiadzin
Monastery. The scene is painted against Ararat. Snow-capped Ararat which is mentioned in the Bible
in the story of the flood makes the picture more impressive. Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Grigory the
Illuminator Consecrates the Palace where the Echmiadzin was Layed, 1892, oil on canvas, 158 x 97
cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia.
138
political diversity, the vast majority of the Armenians nevertheless saw their own
church as their primary source of belonging and their distinguishing language and
history. Within the literature of early writers, clerics, and bishops, constant expressions
of sorrow for the destruction of the homeland, together with religious and mythical
stories, dogmas, and practices claiming to represents God’s will, became important
explanatory models.236 In his eighteenth-century travelogue, John Bell described
Armenian religiosity in the following way: “… But certain it is, that when the
Armenians see this mountain [Ararat], they make a sign of the cross, and say their
prayers as is their custom, when they approach any place which they esteem sacred.”237
Such places reflected unity and are considered to be subordinated by social and cultural
powers by offering a detailed narrative that represents Armenian history and the causes
of dispersion.238
Aivazovsky painted the Ararat landscape with its imposing mountain—the
perennial symbol of Armenia—on about ten different occasions. According to some
sources, Aivazovsky was actually the first Armenian painter to depict Ararat. The
natural majesty and awesome sanctity of the mountain and its setting as portrayed by
Aivazovsky carried a sense of foreboding, with an iconoclastic influence in the world
of Armenian art. In 1868, Aivazovsky broke that spell.239
During a trip to the Caucasus in 1868, the artist created two canvases with the
views of Mount Ararat and Lake Sevan. Painted in 1868, Ararat [figure 53] depicts a
mountain shrouded in mist and the adjacent valley. Attention is drawn to the
236 Lisa Khachaturian, “Cultivating Nationhood in Imperial Russia: The Periodical Press and the
formation of a Modern Eastern Armenian Identity” (Ph. D. diss., Georgetown University, 2005), 221.
237 See John Bell, Travels from St. Petersburg, in Russia, to Diverse Parts of Asia, vol. 1, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1764), 86.
238 Jivan Tabibian, “Modernization, Political culture, and Political Economy in the Diaspora,”
Armenian Review 31, no. 1 (1983), 20.
239 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 134.
139
foreground, where the valley of Ararat is depicted and a camel caravan is passing along
the road. Animals are loaded with big and, apparently, heavy bales. All items in the
foreground are masterfully and accurately reproduced. Although a mountainous
country, ancient fables and legends in Armenia were devoted to the sea. One favorite
of folklore heroes, Sanasar,240 was born from the sea, which gave him great strength.
Across the generations, a love of the sea took its place as a national feature of Armenia.
The lakes Van and Sevan are still called in Armenian “seas.”241 Aivazovsky’s
Lake Sevan of 1869 [figure 54] sums up his preoccupation with the painterly
possibilities of water. The depiction of an island serves as a narrow middle ground, a
device to mark the transition between the pinkish sky and sunset and its reflection in
the deep azure of Lake Sevan.
Notable in this context is that Aivazovsky never actually visited the lands of
Ararat. In November 1868, during his stay in Tiflis, Aivazovsky received a letter from
Catholicos of All Armenians Gevorg IV (1812-1882), inviting him to visit
Echmiadzin. “The news of your arrival in Tiflis made us very happy,” wrote the
Catholicos. “You approached us, and if you think of unforgettable holy places from
there, then fill your hearts with joy.” The Catholicos wished the artist health and long
life: “Always be happy, be the pride of a respectable kind, and God-given talent to
capture wonderful views of nature on the canvas.”242 The letter, written with paternal
240 Sanasar and Baghdasar: two brothers founded the town of Sassoon. Sanasar was considered the
ancestor of several generations of heroes of Sassoon. David Adams Leeming, “Armenian Mythology,”
in The Oxford Companion to world Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
241 As indicated by Shahen Khachatrian, Armenians have associated the sea with freedom and rescue
since ancient times, for which reason they strove for the coasts—including those of Cilicia and
Crimea—when they had to leave their motherland. Khachatrian thus also suggests that this tradition
could explain the appearance of modern Armenian maritime painters, in a group of which Aivazovsky
was the founder. Khachatrian, Aivazovsky Well-Known and Unknown, 32-33.
242 Catholicos Gevorg IV’s letter to Ivan K. Aivazovsky, November 30, 1868, transcript in Sargsyan,
Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 102; 153-154. I thank Vağarşag Seropyan for
Armenian translations.
140
care, deeply influenced the artist. On December 18, 1868, he replied in Armenian with
the same cordiality:
Holy Father and Blessed Master! With love, having received the letter and
blessing of your Holiness, I answer: Although I should have come to an unforgettable
native/homeland a long time ago, in order to rejoice at the sight of it, to win the love
and blessings of your holiness however, the cruel winter blizzards keep me in Tiflis.
But when spring comes, in April, with the blessing of your holiness, I will certainly
fulfil the vow that I have given for a long time. I remain a humble servant and son of
your holiness and the Father of the whole people.243
Aivazovsky could not fulfill his promise to visit Echmiadzin. With the thought
of the upcoming visit to Armenia, Aivazovsky returned to Feodosia, where in April
and May, he painted pictures of his sketches brought from the Caucasus. However,
circumstances dictated otherwise, and an urgent invitation to attend the opening of the
Suez Canal244 meant he did not visit the land of his ancestors on that occasion.
Nonetheless, he resumed with Armenian subjects in his spirit and imagination and in
his paintings many times during his life. Although dreaming of visiting the homeland
of his ancestors, depicting these symbolic landmarks through his imagination is not
altogether surprising given the practical necessities of the process of building national
consciousness, but it demonstrates an intellectual standing on the part of the artist
243 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to Catholicos Gevorg IV, December 18, 1868, transcript in Sargsyan,
Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 154-155.
244 The impressive visual frame of the inauguration of the Suez Canal was intended to represent the
canal as a modern wonder of the world achieved by European intelligence and technology. In the
autumn of 1869, Aivazovsky went to Sevastopol, where he joined the tourist group that had arrived
from St. Petersburg and together with them went on a steamer to the Mediterranean Sea, and then to
Egypt. Prominent state and public figures from many European countries, in particular, the French
Empress Eugene and the Austrian Emperor Franz-Joseph, arrived at the celebrations to mark the
opening of the channel. Together with one of the prominent Russian admirals F. P. Litke, Aivazovsky
had a chance to observe the opening ceremony of the Suez—the shortest sea route connecting the
Western world with the Orient. At the same time, the artist made sketches in his travel album. An
impressive painting of Aivazovsky, Suez Canal depicts the entrance to the channel through which
sailboats and small ships sail. In the center of the picture there is a pillar striving into the sky at the
entrance to the canal, past which a caravan of sailboats slowly passes. Aivazovsky portrayed the Suez
Canal in broad-water against the background of flat space: in the foreground are large and small
sailboats and several ships, one of them is a steamer. In the lower right corner, you can see the front of
a large sailboat, whose passengers congratulate the first visitors of the canal. The spectacle is beautiful
and impressive! Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Suez Canal, 1876, oil on canvas, 34.2 x 44 cm, Sotheby’s
London. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 137-38.
141
commensurate with his traditional standing in the second half of nineteenth-century
Armenian society and with the received status of his art as a manifestation of his
intersected identities.
Ararat and Lake Sevan are important symbols in the imagined history of the
Armenian nation. As indicated above, no Armenian painter had previously depicted
Mount Ararat, its valley, and Lake Sevan. Aivazovsky was the first Armenian, in Tiflis
in 1868, to depict the ancestral homeland, subsequently attracting the attention of
young artists to the picturesque nature of Armenia. Indeed, Aivazovsky again painted
the majestic two-summit mountain in 1882, naming it The Valley of Mount Ararat.245
Moreover, he signed his name in Armenian, as “Aivazian, 1882,” on the rock at the
bottom and to the left of the painting, as well as his usual Russian signature.246 In 1885,
he signed another, Mount Ararat [figure 55], both in Armenian and Russian.
Framed by a Bible: Depictions of Ararat as a Holy Mountain, Descent of Noah
from Ararat
In 1887, Aivazovsky once again painted Mount Ararat, this time with the
biblical theme of “after the deluge.” He named it simply Descent of Noah from Ararat.
In this painting, “the vast emptiness of the world-universe after the Deluge, the majesty
of Mount Ararat, and the chilling serenity of the disciplined descent of the survivors,
all breathe biblical inevitability. Moreover […] Noah’s group has chosen to bend the
path of the caravan in a semicircle […] The Patriarchal group is pushed further away
245 Although I could not reach the image of this painting, Nikolai Barsamov mentions that this picture
exhibited in Moscow during the Exhibition of Union of Soviet Artist in 1950 and now in Private
Collection. Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Valley of Mount Ararat, 1882, oil on canvas, 69 x 102 cm,
Private Collection. See: Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 203.
246 Pars Tuğlacı also mentions that Aivazovsky preferred to sign the paintings which depicted the
Armenian themed as “Aivazian.” He further indicates that The Virgin and Child, 1891 which was
executed for an Armenian Church in Feodosia and Walking on the Waters, 1873, which was drawn for
the Simferopol Armenian Church, now both are located in the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery in
Feodosia are example to paintings that Aivazovsky signed them also as “Aivazian.” Pars Tuğlacı,
Ayvazovski Türkiye’de (Istanbul: İnkılâp ve Aka Kitabevleri, 1983), 16.
142
from its followers, in an anticlockwise motion, towards the right, thus creating a
guiding momentum for the bemused survivors in their descent.”247 In 1890, he showed
this large-scale painting, the depiction of the biblical mount literally lit by divine light,
at the salon of Paul Durand-Ruel during his Paris exhibition, in which Emperor
Napoleon III and his wife were among the visitors. The exhibition lasted more than
three weeks. A journalist of the Armenian periodical Bazmavep248 reported that in a
Paris exhibition of Aivazovsky’s paintings in 1889, one of the visitors recalled: “I
carefully looked at the pictures, when the artist suddenly approached me and asked:
Surely, you are looking for an Armenian motive in my paintings? Yes, sir, you guessed
my thoughts correctly, I replied. He led me around the hall and said: Here it is, our
Armenia! This was the picture Descent of Noah from Ararat. [figure 56].249
The panorama created here by Aivazovsky, around Noah’s Old Testament
story and his kin, him of guiding the animals from the Ark, their postdiluvian place of
rest, is of a common history preserved by apparently eternal, uncorrupted truths. This
implied message may have persuaded many of Aivazovsky’s admirers, but it was also
an anathema to others, such as Repin, who claimed that art’s duty in Russia was
constantly questioned and not sconvincing. Aivazovsky’s Armenian-themed paintings
can be seen to correspond broadly to the rise of a national consciousness among the
Armenian people, which is also directly analogous to the social change not only in
Russia but also in the Ottoman Empire and in Armenians who lived in the world of
247 For a detailed description of this painting, see https://keghart.org/turner-aivazovsky-an-auspiciousencounter/.
248 Bazmavep is an academic journal covering Armenian studies. It is published by the Mechitarist
monastery in San Lazzaro, Venice, Italy. Bazmavep was established by Aivazovsky’s brother Gabriel
Aivazovsky and Ghevond Alishan in 1843. Hacikyan, The Heritage of Armenian Literature, 57 and
Bogos Levon Zekiyan, “Բազմավէպ.” հայագիտական հանդեսներու նահապետը (150-ամյա
հոբելյանին առթիվ,” [“Bazmavep.” The Forefather of the Armenological Journals (dedicated to 150th
anniversary)] Patma-Banasirakan Handes 1 (1995): 103–110. I am grateful to His Excellency Levon
Zekiyan to share his valuable comments with me and provided to access this source.
249 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 203.
143
both empires. The analogy is important since it gives a sense of continuous connection
within the changing status of the Russo–Ottoman world of the nineteenth century. One
of the most striking aspects of a culturally and realistically relative assessment of
Aivazovsky’s paintings is how closely they match current social and political
philosophy of the geography, covering, partially, the Ottoman and Russian empires
and the Armenian territories. In this regard, both the biblical and the picturesque
depictions of Armenian landmarks might be seen as the paradigmatic expression of an
artist aware of the rise of a national consciousness among Armenians, yet who has an
in-depth understanding of Russian imperial discourse and has an association with
Armenians during the long nineteenth century.
Portrayal of an Atrocity: Aivazovsky’s Responses to the Ottoman-Armenian
Massacre of 1895–97
In the second part of this chapter, I consider some aspects of the visual
representation of Ottoman–Armenian victimhood, with special reference to
Aivazovsky’s responses to the Armenian massacres as systematically published in the
massive, illustrated Russian-language tome Fraternal Help, compiled and edited by
Grigor Djanshiev.250 Recent scholarly examinations251 of Djanshiev’s accounts of
Armenian victimhood have emphasized its formative contribution to the
250 In his unpublished dissertation, Vazken H. Davidian clearly explains the aims of Fraternal Help in
three points: firstly, the journal organized philanthropic activities and helped to raise funds for
survivors of victimhood; secondly, it raised cultural and political awareness of Ottoman rule; and
lastly—as Davidian emphasized, criticizing the rising Russian nationalism under the reign of
Alexander III—it informed and reminded Russian audiences of the loyalty of Armenians and
portrayed them as victims of Ottoman misrule. Davidian, “The Representation of the Figure,” 34.
251 In her article about Ottoman-born Armenian painter Panos Terlemezian, Gizem Tongo has
described Fraternal Help as a “Russian propagandistic publication.” Gizem Tongo, “Artist and
Revolutionary: Panos Terlemezian as an Ottoman Armenian Painter,” Études arméniennes
contemporaines 6 (December 2015): 140-141. Indeed, the volume aimed to shape public opinion and
promoted a political agenda, as Vazken Davidian emphasizes, although characterizing it as “Russian,”
because of the language used, may incorrectly be taken to indicate that it was simply sponsored by
an/or supportive of the Russian state and overlooks the Russian Armenian agency in the production
and its distribution. The choice of the Russian language rather than Eastern Armenian ensured the
widest possible constituency within Tsarist borders. Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity,” 64.
144
historiographies of ethnicity and nationality as a nineteenth-century phenomenon. This
process has also entailed analogous (re)consideration of the complementary visual
material. In light of this important and valuable source, I want to return to an arthistorical
focus, concentrating on a group of major in-massacre paintings by
Aivazovsky, to consider them as historical or historicizing artifacts that corresponded
with and answered the development of the national discourse of Armenian history in
Russian culture at the time. Throughout these paintings, Aivazovsky demonstrated
how the conceptualization of history was challenged, and to an important extent,
redirected by the encounter with the proto-nationalist Armenian culture. Conversely,
through reference to a historicizing mode of pictorial representation, Aivazovsky
offered a tentative, but clearly evident, visual representation of the Armenian
massacre, one substantially different to other artists because of its relationship with the
contemporary debate concerning the Armenians’ situation in the Ottoman Empire, a
debate that was amplified and complicated by the experience of a massacre. His claim
to authority for his representations of Armenian victimhood derived from the fact that
he was well informed about the various incidents in the Ottoman Empire.252 As a side
benefit, his lands in Crimea provided him with close, first-hand access to the testimony
of refugess, increasing his ability to comment, via the power of painting, on history
and to combine politics and art in service of national consciousness. The stories of
Armenian refugees, from Trabzon, Iğdır and from other areas of the Black Sea coast
of the Ottoman Empire, about the extermination of innocent people caused Aivazovsky
personal distress: in a “Letter from Feodosia,” signed T. Khanoyan and published in
the influential Russian–Armenian liberal and Russophile daily Mshak253 [Cultivator]
252 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 233-234.
253 Mshak [The cultivator] was formatted as a newspaper and circulating first as weekly (1872-1875),
later as a tri-weekly (1876-1877), and finally, as daily paper beginning in 1878. It was founded by
Grigor Artzruni (1845-1892). Mshak played a prominent role in advocating social democracy and
145
on 5 May 1900, immediately after the artist’s death, the author describes Aivazovsky’s
response:
The artist’s face was darkened when he listened to the stories of Armenian
refugees about the monstrous and terrible pogroms that took place in Turkey in 1896’
– said an eyewitness – about the capturing of his sisters and beating his sons. The artist
was tormented, understanding that he could not help his half-brothers, and only calmed
him with the words: ‘Do not despair! Work! Perhaps one day the dark horizon will
clear up and you will see a bright dawn … Ah!’ In the days of the Armenian pogroms,
the refugees who told Aivazovsky about the suffering they had endured left his house
mentally lightened and with a soothing heart.254
Going beyond consolations and words of hope, Aivazovsky helped many
refugees settle in Crimean villages and cities. With his mediation, they were given new
plots of land and places to live. And to some, especially the poor, Aivazovsky opened
up the “Sheikh-Mamai,” lands of his estate, giving them a place to live and work.255
He opened his doors to Armenians who had fled the massacre, bringing them in
supplies and allowing them to settle in and start new lives. “It is shameful to turn away
from your own people,” Vasily S. Krivenko256 wrote, quoting the painter’s own words,
“especially so small in number and so oppressed.” Further on, he wrote, “The source
of painful feelings for Aivazovsky was the thought of those acts of violence which the
Turks had committed on the defenseless and wretched Armenians. He did not stop
believing, did not stop hoping that people’s hearts would be moved, that Europe, at
initiating reforms in labor organizations. Artzruni in particular recognized the significance of how
frequency of a journal for national prestige; he often compared his subscription with European
periodicals, and worked hard to upgrade his journal Mshak’s status from a weekly to a daily. He
believed that national progress could be measured by a rise in the circulation frequency of a journal.
Hacikyan, The Heritage of Armenian Literature, 69; Lisa Khachaturian, “Cultivating Nationhood in
Imperial Russia,” 37.
254 Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity,” 48; Sargsyan, The Life of Great Marine Painter, 234.
255 Not content with only such help, the artist set about organizing new exhibitions and selling his
paintings, the proceeds from which he transferred to the Foundation for Assistance to Armenians
affected by the pogroms. In addition, according to his projects, and sometimes at his own expense, he
built chapels for refugees in different parts of the Crimea. Sargsyan, The Life of Great Marine Painter,
235; Khachatrian, Aivazovsky Well-Known and Unknown, 47; Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich
Aivazovsky, 93-95
256 Vasily S. Krivenko (1854-1931), the writer and public figure who was a contributor to the
newspaper Новое Время (New Time), was also a frequent guest of Aivazovsky and wrote a book of
memoirs about him. Tatyana Gayduk, “Aivazovsky’s House and Guests,” Tretyakov Gallery
Magazine 1, no. 54 (2017),
146
last, would stand up for them and not let the Turks completely destroy the poor
people.”257 Aivazovsky’s assistance to the Armenian people was broad and versatile.
A wave of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire had spread over the Caucasus, the
Crimea, and the southern region of the Russian Empire. Aivazovsky donated all funds
received from the exhibition of paintings to the themes of the bloody events in the
Ottoman Empire.258
Such profound sadness permeates a missive of 8 September 1896, written by
Aivazovsky in response to a letter from the Catholicos of All Armenians 259 Mgrdich
Khrimian (1820-1907), affectionately known as Hayrik.260 Written soon after the
Ottoman Bank Incident261, as Vazken Davidian emphasizes, following the massacre in
Constantinople, and perhaps referring to these events, the letter shows the great sorrow
of Aivazovsky.262 Also, as one of the surviving exchanging correspondences between
257 Memoirs of Krivenko [Мемуары В. С. Кривенко], RGALI [Russian State Archive of Literature
and Art], fund 785, op. 1, unit xp. 1, pp. 34-51. Until 1992, this archive was called as Central State
Literary Archive (TSGLA). Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 94. I am grateful to Kseniya
Venediktova to provide me to access these sources in Russian archives.
258 As well as from the realization of these paintings, to the relief fund for the most-needy Armenian
families. Probably, in addition to these funds, he sent money directly to the Ottoman Empire, as there
was gratitude from the Russian Embassy in Constantinople, in which Aivazovsky is informed that the
money donated by him in favor of the Armenians was sent to the Consul General in Erzurum, where it
was distributed to the most-affected Armenians. Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 95.
259 Supreme Head of Armenian Orthodox Church, residing in Echmiadzin in Russian Armenia.
260 Hayrik means “little father” in Armenian. Mgrdich Khrimian was a fervent advocate of reform and
a great educator who published the first Armenian-language newspaper in Ottoman Armenia (Artsiv
Vaspurakani or Eagle of Van), aimed at sensitizing the capital’s elite population to the provincial
plight. For Khrimian, people’s reformation and wellbeing were above all other concerns, and he
aligned with regional mass interests. As such, he also criticized the oppressive regimes of Sultan
Abdülhamid II and Tsar Nicholas II and other powerful Armenians in Istanbul. Tongo, “Artist and
Revolutionary Tongo,” 140-142. Gerard Libaridian, Modern Armenia: People, Nation, State (New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 59-62; Hacikyan, The Heritage of Armenian Literature,
236-238.
261 A party of some 20 Dashnak militants raided the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul on 26 August 1896 and
kept some of the workers for ransom, announcing that if their demands were not met, they would blow
up the bank. For more information, see: Edhem Eldem, “26 Ağustos 1896 ‘Banka Vakası’ ve 1896
‘Ermeni Olayları’” Tarih ve Toplum 5 (spring 2007): 113-146; For a firsthand account of the attack
on the Ottoman Bank, written by the Dashnak leader, see: Armen Garo, Osmanlı Bankası: Armen
Garo’nun Anıları (Istanbul: Belge Uluslararası Yayıncılık, 2009).
262 Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity,” 48.
147
Khrimian and the artist, this document illuminates intriguing indications into the two
men’s responses to the massacres:
Blessed Lord, His Holiness the Patriarch!
I was greatly honored by your holy message. […] Holy Sovereign! The longtime
dream of my heart was to visit your Supreme Throne, to be at your feet, and I’m
keen for God to get the means to successfully fulfil my dream. God’s anointed! You
have made me a very sensitive and wonderful proposal – to paint a red paint over a
picture of the Armenian massacre against the background of blood-drenched
mountains and the grief-stricken Hayrik over the ruins. If it pleases the Almighty to
give me life and a little longer, the day will come when I will fulfil this touching offer.
(The proposal of the Catholicos Khrimyan to paint a picture on the subject of the
extermination of Armenians in Turkey was accepted by the artist.)
Yes, His Holiness the Patriarch, my heart is deeply hurt by an unprecedented
and unheard of massacre perpetrated against the Armenians. Your Excellency over
there, we over here, and each in his own place, bitterly mourn the lost souls of our
unfortunate congeners and call upon God’s mercy. My wife and I bow down before
your holiness, we attach ourselves to your holy hand wishing for more days of
consolation.263
Aivazovsky’s letters, written in a formal tone, show great respect and
appreciation for Khrimian. These two men, perhaps the most honorable Armenian
elders of their era, met the year before when Aivazovsky hosted Catholicos on his land,
on his return journey from St. Petersburg after his failed mission to facilitate the
intervention of Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) to stop the massacres.264 As Count
Dimitri A. Milyutin265 wrote in his diary, Aivazovsky was deeply grieved by the
position of the Armenians in Turkey, accusing Russian policy-makers, and Prince
Lobanov-Rostovsky266 in particular.267 Sargsyan describes Khrimian’s arrival in
263 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to Mgrdich Khrimian, September 8, 1896, transcript in Sargsyan,
Artunian and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 277-278.
264 Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity,” 49.
265 Dimitri Alekseyevich Milyutin (1816-1912), Minister of War for two decades until1881 and the
last Field Marshal of Imperial Russia in 1898, carried out sweeping military reforms of the Russian
army in the 1860s and 70s. In his own Crimean estate in Simeiz the retiree Milyutin was often visited
by numerous colleagues and disciples as well as by Ivan K. Aivazovsky.
266 Prince Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovsky (1824-1896) was one of several imperial Russian officials
who proposed the policy of “Armenia without Armenians.” He supported the Ottoman integrity. For
“Armenia without Armenians” see: Ronal Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 180; Manoug Somakian, Empires in Conflict:
Armenia and the Great Powers, 1912-1920 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 23.
267 Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 95. I, personally, could not gain access to the original
document of the diary which is in the Russian State Library, Moscow.
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Feodosia and the celebratory atmosphere surrounding his visit. He held a church
service in St. Sarkis’ church, then went to Surb-Hach Monastery and stayed for a week
in the painter’s house as a guest. Aivazovsky is recorded as having sketched Khrimian
during that visit, which was probably the basis for his full-length portrait of the
Catholicos [figure 57], dated 1895. However, the trip may have had certain benefits
for both men, they almost certainly did discuss the massacres as well, as Sargsyan
suggests: “These days, in the house of the maestro, questions were raised that worried
Armenians throughout the region.”268
Aivazovsky expressed his indignation at Ottoman violence in his works.
Responding to these events, he painted large-scale works depicting awful tragedies.
Of his paintings on these themes, the most prominent one is The Massacre of the
Armenians in Trebizond in 1895 [figure 58]. The canvas depicts the coastal region of
Trebizond (inhabited by Armenians) to which Ottoman troops arrive by boat; the
Ottoman soldiers kill the Armenian men on the shore and carry off an Armenian
woman. Late nineteenth-century thought had it as axiomatic that a “de-humanization”
of the enemy and the Romantic idealization of the nation (Armenian, in this instance)
could induce the sympathetic imagination of the viewer, especially through scenes of
pity or distress; experienced vicariously at an aesthetic remove, these could certainly
generate a national as well as Romantic sensibility. Such anxieties over the massacres
through the gaze of “Romantic idealization” of a nation are not culturally isolated, of
course, but pertain to a much deeper and long-standing discursive matrix concerning
Armenians’ apprehension of Ottoman rule.
Since the nineteenth century, Ottoman–Armenian relations, specifically the
representation of the Ottoman “yoke,” has undergone significant scholarly scrutiny.
268 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 226-227.
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What I want to draw attention to is the way in which, in particular circumstances of
the late nineteenth century Ottoman–Russian–Armenian world, such deep-rooted
attitudes toward the massacres became conjoined with the nationalistic perceptions of
both the Ottoman/Turkish and Armenian nations and in particular how the generalized
art-historical and iconographic analyses of Aivazovsky’s atrocity images were filtered
through specific national concerns. Thus, in Armenian art historiography, it is
uncritically accepted that Trebizond in 1895 was “created on the basis of true
occurrences” where “the subject has been lifted from reality.” Although Aivazovsky
was not an eyewitness to the massacre of Trebizond in 1895, Minas Sargsyan claims
that “Aivazovsky correctly and in greatest detail has presented not only [the] seaside
landscape of Trebizond, that he had seen in the past, but also the tragedy occurring,”
hence “depicting [a] true event which he learned from the newspaper reports and from
testimonies of refugees who fled to the Crimea through the Black Sea.”269
However, does Trebizond in 1895 depict “reality?” Is it surprising that the
painting was the subject of such a prolific and executed amount of visual imagery of
the artist’s concern? Following closely in the footsteps of the reports of eyewitnesses,
Vazken Davidian argued that the events indicated in the reports do not correspond to
the scene depicted in Trebizond in 1895, that the massacre illustrated in this painting
is not a representation of the massacre that took place in the city in 1895.270 Also,
Davidian continues to consider this painting and other atrocity images of Aivazovsky
as “conforming to a lifelong preoccupation with painting the sea […] and [proposing]
a subjective and imagined dramatization of history presented as spectacle.”271 I agree
with Davidian that Aivazovsky’s composition plays entirely upon the sentimental
269 Ibid., 233-234.
270 Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity,” 53.
271 Ibid., 44.
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drama of the event, dispensing altogether with reference to the seascape context. Yet,
rather than redeploying an existing building for the purposes of nationalistic display
of massacres, Aivazovsky proposes the construction of a new, ideally conceived
structure on the subject of Armenian Ottoman victimhood. The panorama thus
provided aesthetically satisfying visuality (in the sublimity of the scene of a seascape),
combined with a highly moralized criticism concerning the dehumanization of the
Ottoman rulers. It offered a minor prototype for Armenian nationalist artistic ideology,
and it is worth reiterating that Aivazovsky’s work became available to many viewers,
thus crucial to the national memorial, so the full significance of Aivazovsky’s atrocity
images are appreciated by relating them to this larger discursive framework Nikolai
Barsamov also mentions that in 1898, Aivazovsky sent those pictures to Moscow for
exhibition, and the tragedy of their content was noted in an article on the exhibition of
these paintings: “One cannot look at the picture of Trebizond: Beating of Armenians
in 1895 without a shudder and tears.”272
On the subject of the Armenian massacre, Aivazovsky created the paintings
Turks Load Armenians onto the Ships and Turks Offload the Armenians into the Sea
of Marmara. Only sketches of them reached readers through the support of Fraternal
Help, the first publication within an Armenian context to reproduce atrocity images.
These comprised engravings of a painting and two sketches by Aivazovsky.
Considering the elderly artist’s international fame, the importance of his active
involvement in Fraternal Help cannot be overstated. For the 1897 edition, Djanshiev
wrote that “for the current collection Aivazovsky has sent four drawings from Nice:
Turks Load Armenians onto the Ships [figure 59], Turks Offload the Armenians into
272 Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 95.
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the Sea of Marmara [figure 60], Descent of Noah from Ararat,273 Ship at the Sea.”274
A footnote was added in 1898: “With the kind permission of the illustrious artist we
are reproducing the painting which was shown in his last exhibition Massacre of
Armenians at Trebizond.”275 The special respect awarded to him by Djanshiev is
reflected throughout both editions, making Aivazovsky the sole participating artist in
Fraternal Help to have his biography, portrait, and a facsimile of signature published.
In stark contrast to the plethora of traditional representations of Ottoman–Armenian
suffering, Aivazovsky’s images are the earliest by a Russian–Armenian artist to
provide direct depictions of specific, recorded events of mass violence.
Set against the backdrop of Constantinople, Turks Load Armenians onto the
Ship depicts a crowd being moved onto (one or maybe two) large boats, with a larger
vessel waiting. This is an orderly operation, but conducted by a group of armed men,
bayonets held high. Turks Offload the Armenians into the Sea of Marmara depicts the
human cargo being violently unloaded into a calm sea. Here, there is panic and fear, a
sense of struggle as some of the victims plead for mercy or try to swim or at least
remain afloat.
An 1898 edition of Fraternal Help also included Aivazovsky’s sketch Descent
of Noah from Ararat.276 An 1897 edition of the tome included the painting
Aivazovsky’s 1889 dated painting Descent of Noah from Ararat [mentioned in the first
part of this chapter, and see figure 56] It is interesting to note that while Aivazovsky
was depicting the annihilation of the Armenians in the atrocity images of Ottoman
273 Descent of Noah from Ararat included in 1897, but apparently not in 1898: Djanshiev, Fraternal
Help, 1897, Part 1, 501.
274 It appears that only three were reproduced in the 2nd edition.
275 Djanshiev, Fraternal Help, 1898, pg. 426, fn. 2.
276 Vazken Davidian indicates that Aivazovsky “revisited his 1887 monumental canvas of biblical
myth” which is reproduced in Fraternal Help 1897 edition. A closer look at sources reveals a different
picture, though. Aivazovsky did this picture in 1889. Khachatrian, Aivazovsky Well-Known and
Unknown, 136; Nikolai Novouspensky, Иван Айвазовский. Великие Мастера Живописи
[Aivazovsky. Great Painters] (St. Petersburg, 2010); http://www.gallery.am/hy/database/item/296/.
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massacres, this sketch [figure 61] and the painting allegorically represent the salvation
of the Armenians after the massacres. The illustration of the patriarch leading his kin
to salvation from the Ark after the deluge provides a compelling allegory of
deliverance: as it was for humankind after the great flood, the salvation of the Ottoman
Armenians would come after the massacres in the foothills of the great mountain, their
eventual safe harbor under Russian protection. However, my further research has
revealed this sketch could be another impressive painting of Aivazovsky called
Descent of Noah from Ararat after the Great Flood (stylistically very similar to the
1889 painting) [figure 62], dated 1898 and located in the Armenian Patriarchate of
Istanbul.277 What I want to suggest here is that such an elusive referential force was
biblical, and the ancient root of the nation was communicated and understood
effectively through visual culture and its related forms in the formulation of
nineteenth-century national identities, and Aivazovsky preferred to draw, for the
second time, this biblical mythical story to consider something of the relationship
between the ancient root and identity in the Russo-Armenian world, specifically
regarding the ways in which the visualization of Ararat functioned as a means of
articulating the emerging national identity that was seriously under attack toward the
end of the nineteenth century.
While The Massacre of the Armenians in Trebizond in 1895 and its
reproduction appear to have caught the public imagination and the critics’ attention,
two engraved sketches and two paintings, Quiet Night: Armenians Thrown Overboard
277 I had an opportunity to see this painting at the Patriarchate. As far as I could research, only in Pars
Tuğlacı’s book is there information about this work. Tuğlacı, Aivazovsky Türkiye’de, 62. I suggest that
Aivazovsky drew the subject of Noah and Mount Ararat for the second time in a similar context.
However, I could not find any information how and under which circumstances this second image
came to Istanbul. Yet, a closer look to the sketch and the painting reveals that the 1898-dated painting
is the finished version of the sketch that was published in Fraternal Help. The scarcity of the sources
about this painting can also explain why G. Djanshiev elected to include the 1889 painting of the
artist; he probably did not see the 1898 version.
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[figure 63] and Night: Tragedy at the Sea of Marmara [figure 64], depicts a mass
drowning, a primary figure in Aivazovsky’s visual realization of the massacres. As
previously mentioned, Aivazovsky was never an eyewitness to the events of the
massacres directly. However, the testimonies, letters, and published materials drew a
picture in Aivazovsky’s mind. In his book, Armenia and Its Sorrow, W. J. Wintle
provided a private letter from a resident in Constantinople:
Wholesale deportation became the order of the day. The miserable creatures
were driven like cattle to the quays and embarked on Turkish vessel, professedly
destined for Asia Minor. The ugliest rumors are abroad as to the fate of these people.
It is even stated that they were simply thrown into the sea; certainly nothing has – at
the time of writing – been heard them. 278
Meanwhile, it is not certain whether the two surviving atrocity paintings, also
produced in 1897, were formally visualized as part of a series alongside Trebizond in
1895. Some of the Russian-language press presents clues in citing these two surviving
paintings. However, partly due to inconsistent captioning of these works, it is probably
inaccurate to cite these massacre-related paintings. However, a letter written by
Aivazovsky to Karapet Yezov279 about his current exhibition in Odessa gives more
reliable information about the paintings:
At the present time in Odessa there is an exhibition of my latest works. Among
the sixteen paintings, there are three depicting the cruelty of the Turks, the cutting of
Armenians in Trebizond, how they cast live Armenians from the steamer to the Sea of
Marmara and the third, as the Turks in Thessaly burn Greeks during the war. The
money from the exhibition will be given to the Greeks and Armenians who suffered
during this war. When the exhibition closes, I will ask that money for the Armenians
is sent to our [Russian] ambassador Zinoviev […]”280
278 W. J. Wintle, Armenia and Its Sorrows (London: Andrew Melrose, 1896), 117-118. Also, Vazken
Davidian provided an example from this letter and as he emphasizes these sketches narrate the rumors
of the letter and that Aivazovsky was well aware of these narrative stories. Davidian, “The
Representation of the Figure,” 45.
279 Orientalist and educator Karapet Yezov (Yezyan), 1835–1905, was a leading figure in the 1881
establishment of the Sanasarian College in Erzurum, Ottoman Armenia. D. V. Bugayev, 200 лет
триумфа [200 Years of Triumph] (Simferopol, 2017), 303-305.
280 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to Karapet Yezov, February, 23, 1897, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian
and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 281. The exhibition of Aivazovsky’s works was opened on
December 1, 1897 in Odessa. In this regard, Aivazovsky wrote to the mayor of Odessa in November
with a request to promote the construction of the exhibition. This exhibition showed a number of
paintings on the massacres of Armenians and Greeks in Turkey, including Beating Armenians in
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Scholars widely agree that the massacres represented the turning point in the
artist’s long-term lucrative relationship281 with the Ottoman palace. While evidently
optimistic282 toward Abdülhamid II,283 at least until 1882, Aivazovsky became
unhappy on at least two occasions284 about being honored by a sultan that pursued anti-
Trabzon, Loading Passengers–Armenians on the Steamer, Unloading Armenians into the Sea of
Marmara, Moonlight, Thessaly, European Fleet off the Coast of the Island of Crete, etc. These
paintings were also exhibited in Moscow in 1898.
281 Greater numbers of civilians, especially artists, would receive such imperial orders as a kind of
award. Specifically, starting with the famous Mecîdî Order of 1852 the Ottomans would gradually
start to use such decorations. Several documents from the Ottoman archives show that Aivazovsky
was awarded the fourth-class Mecîdî upon the presentation of one of his paintings to the Sultan. The
documents indicate: “As I have understood from the painting he has made and presented to My
Imperial Person that Aivazovsky, a Russian subject and renowned artist, is a man of great talent and
knowledge, I have honored him by bestowing upon him the insignia of the fourth class of My Imperial
Order of the Mecîdîye, to which effect My present Imperial diploma has been issued.” BOA,
A.DVN.MHM. 24/69, 20-30 Cemaziyülahir 1274/January 6-16, 1858; BOA, A.DVN. 129/42, 17
Cemaziyülahir 1274/February 2, 1858. Aivazovsky continued to be awarded by the Ottoman sultan.
He would receive a second decoration, in the form of the second-class Osmânî from Sultan Abdülaziz
in 1874. For more information about the Ottoman decorations see: Edhem Eldem, Pride and
Privilege: A History of Ottoman Orders, Medals and Decorations (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives
and Research Center, 2004) and for Aivazovsky’s order see page 187.
282 In the journal of Mecmua-i Ebüzziya, an Ottoman journalist Ebüzziya Tevfik mentions a memory
of Sultan Abdülhamid II soon after his enthronement. Abdülhamid was deciding on spaces for the
paintings’ hangings, and he asked Ebüzziya specifically about Aivazovsky: the Sultan said, “[…]
These paintings were made by Aivazovsky. They were commissioned by Sultan Abdülaziz. Especially
that was painted upon my uncle’s sketch [Sultan Abdülaziz’s sketch] Sarkis Bey [an Armenian
architect Sarkis Balyan] indicated that kind of depiction quality has no precedent. Indeed, this [fog]
feels like it will be held by hand. What a talented painter is he? Do you recognize him? […]”
Ebüzziya answered: “Yes, Your Excellency, I know him. The photographer Abdullah Fréres
introduced him. He even gave one of his paintings to me as a compliment.” The Sultan asked what
kind of man he was: young or old looking. I continued, “I saw him five years ago. He was a man in
his 45s at the time. He looked pretty cute. His moustache and chin are shaved. If you would not know
he is a Russian, it a quite possible to think that he is an American or English. He speaks Caucasian
Turkish.” For a complete version of Ebüzziya Tevfik’s memoir with Sultan Abdülhamid, see:
https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/17964. I would like to thank Dr. Deniz Türker,
who directed me to this source. Also, it is interesting to note the comment, “If you would not know he
is a Russian it a quite possible to think that he is an American or English.” The Russian image in the
eyes of the Ottomans was generally someone high-tempered, large, and somewhat rough. The writer
would have written of Aivazovsky’s image as a gentleman, unable to match him as a Russian.
283 Following the massacres of southeastern Anatolia in 1894-1895, and of Istanbul in 1895 and 1896,
the sultan Abdülhamid II had acquired his reputation of a “Red Sultan,” which was conveyed
throughout most of the western press. As Edhem Eldem emphasizes, this was one of the touchiest
issues for the Sultan and his well-known paranoia had been further exacerbated by the events and by
the accusations made against him. Eldem, Pride and Privilege, 346.
284 BOA, Y.A.HUS 344/51, 06 Şaban 1313/January 22, 1896. The document indicates that during a
dinner party he had organized at his home, the Russian Armenian painter Aivazovsky, several times
decorated by Abdülhamid and his predecessors, had unleashed his rage against the Ottoman state,
claiming that the army and the Kurds were gradually annihilating all the Armenian population of the
Empire, that these massacres caused much concern among the Great powers, but that if they did not
intervene in time, it would be for the Armenians living in Istanbul and outside of the Empire to take
up arms and fight for the independence of their country. It also reveals that the Palace had
immediately had decided to reclaim the decorations from Aivazovsky.
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Armenian policies, promising never to wear the medals. Edhem Eldem referred to the
occasion stated by the consul of Feodosia to Constantinople in December 1895, in one
version of the story according to which Aivazovsky “had thrown [the medals] on the
floor, had forbidden his wife to wear the second-class Şefkat and had decided to turn
all these objects into brooches for his daughter and toys to be worn by his nephew at
school.” Apparently, there was an official Ottoman attempt to reclaim the decorations.
The Palace made a formal complaint in response to the affront. In another version, the
artist delivered some ribbons for the Ottoman consul, stating he had thrown the medals
into the Black Sea, adding, “Your Sultan too can throw my paintings into the sea, I
would not care.”285
In what follows, then, I want to consider something of the relationship between
Aivazovsky’s constructive setting and his Armenianness in his illustrative atrocity
world, specifically regarding the ways in which the visualization of the sea (depicted
as calm in all of these images) functioned as a means of articulating the national
identities that were increasingly understood to comprise the artist, Aivazovsky, toward
the end of the nineteenth century. In speaking of “visualization,” I do not mean simply
the graphic or artistic depiction of the sea, but rather the sea in terms of visuality, that
is, how, for a given world of Aivazovsky, certain ideas and phenomena became
literally “see-able.”
In Aivazovsky’s images, the sea is depicted as sublime because of its vastness
and unpredictable power, and the sublime relies upon the capacity for sympathy or
empathy in the subject experiencing it. The capacity for sympathy among the figures
unloading from the boat afloat this sublime element, evident in the close attention
Aivazovsky has paid to their pained expressions, indicates that they too are engaged
285 BOA, Y.A.HUS 344/51, 11 Receb 1313/December 28, 1895, Eldem, Pride and Privilege, 348.
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in what is an Ottoman–Armenian victimhood. As an instrument of war produced by a
painter who has intersected identities and was a political and intellectual being, these
paintings, through the provision of systematic publishing opportunity (Fraternal
Help), were employed to effect public opinion and counteract official policy as well
as to raise money and prompt sympathetic intervention.
The Last Stage of His Life: 1899 Baku Exhibition and Depiction of Lord Byron
At the beginning of October 1899, Aivazovsky sent 14 paintings for his
personal exhibition in Baku. The exhibition was organized at the request of the
representatives of the Armenian population. As Minas Sargsyan emphasizes, there is
almost nothing written in Russian art-history literature about this exhibition. As he
points out, it was not even included in the list of personal exhibitions of Aivazovsky
published by Nikolai Barsamov.286 Meanwhile, the Baku exhibition, both in the artist’s
life and in the history of Armenian art, was a significant event. It should be noted that
Baku in the 1890s was one of the largest centers of Armenian culture after Tiflis and
Constantinople. Newspapers reported that visitors filled the exhibition from morning
to evening. Art lovers, sometimes whole families, visited the exposition of the great
marine painter. On November 30, the Mshak newspaper wrote: “The exhibition
[Aivazovsky’s paintings] which opened in Baku, was a great success. Almost all works
were sold. Many people wanted to buy paintings by such a famous artist, and,
undoubtedly, all of them would be sold in Baku.”287
Aivazovsky was pleased with the ongoing exhibition. In a letter written to K.
Yezov, the artists wrote: “In general, the result of the Baku exhibition is very good,
286 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 244-245. Also see: Barsamov, Ivan
Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 175.
287 Mshak, 1898, no. 223.
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except for 10 paintings sold, two more large paintings I send to Tagiev [Z. A. Tagiev,
oil millionaire from Baku] on his request.”288
One of the paintings that the Baku exhibition shows is Byron on the Island of
San Lazzaro [figure 65]. Between 1850 and 1870, a strong strain of Romanticism,
influenced by the movement in Western Europe, developed among Armenian writers,
poets, and playwrights in whose work figures from Armenian history were glorified.
As Vahé Oshagan notes: “The Romantic, virtuous, and patriotic hero became the
dominant figure in the new self-consciousness, nurturing around itself the nascent
aspirations of the period.”289 English Romantic poet Lord Byron was of particular
interest to Armenian writers because of his commitment to Armenian language and
culture. In 1816, Byron visited the Mechitarist Order at the convent of St. Lazarus, a
center of Armenian culture, where he studied Armenian. His letters recounting this
experience, translations of Armenian history and parts of the Armenian Bible, as well
as some poems, were published in English and Armenian in 1870.290 Lord Byron was
also depicted by an Ottoman–Armenian artist, Mgrdich Jivanian (1848-1906), before
Aivazovsky. Although not included in any of his catologues, his painting Lord Byron’s
Dream was exhibited in Pera under the patronage of the British Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire.291 Aivazovsky, in all likelihood, saw this picture in 1890 in
288 Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s letter to Karapet Yezov, December 1, 1898, transcript in Sargsyan, Artunian
and Shatirian, Documents and Materials, 305. Although Aivazovsky wanted to attend the opening of
his exhibition, because of his illness he could not be able to attend it. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great
Marine Painter, 245.
289 Vahé Oshagan, “Cultural and Literary Awakening of Western Armenians, 1789-1915,” Armenian
Review 36, no. 3 (Autumn 1983), 64.
290 George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron’s Armenian Exercises and Poetry (Venice: In the Island of S.
Lazzaro, 1870).
291 Mayda Saris notes that: “Masis, one of the important newspapers of the Istanbul Armenian Press,
in its May 1882 issue, reports of an Exhibition that was held in Pera under the patronage of British
Ambassador. I contained 198 paintings done by both local and foreign artists, including close to 15
Armenian painters. In addition to the works of such important painters and engravers as Yervant
Oskan, Bedros Srabian, those of M. Civanyan were exhibited. The first of the latter was entitled Lord
Byron’s Dream. Here, a mystical atmosphere is created against the breathtaking landscape consisting
of Greek ruins and Oriental caravans.” Mayda Saris, A Painter of Istanbul: Megerdich Jivanian / Bir
İstanbul Ressamı: Mıgırdic Civanyan (Istanbul: Raffi Portakal Antikacılık Müzayede, 2006), 54.
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Constantinople during a meeting with local Armenian artists.292 The maestro returned
to the topic of Byron to show how many artists, including the great English poet, highly
appreciated the centuries-old rich culture of the Armenian people. The painting Byron
on the Island of San Lazzaro depicts the moment of a solemn meeting. Within a group
of monks, Byron, the singer of freedom, is represented being met by Mkhitarists on
the quayside. Aivazovsky intentionally united the figures of different epochs—
unprecedented in his creative work. This touch strengthens the ideological basis of the
picture—the dream of the liberation of his motherland. In the center of the painting is
Ghevond Alishan, the most important researcher of Armenian culture and also a
historian and poet. He was not yet born when Byron visited St. Lazarus Island. Among
the other figures, the heads of the Brotherhood, Sukias Somalian, Mekertich Avgeryan,
and the brother of the painter, Gabriel Aivazovsky, are depicted with portrait-like
exactness.293
Hugely admired by Romantic-nationalist movements in the Russian–Armenian
world throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century,294 it is certain that
Aivazovsky would have been familiar with the British Romantics. In its preface, the
poet wrote about the Armenians: “But whatever may have been their destiny – and it
has been bitter – whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the
most interesting on the globe.”295 Beyond the narrative of Lord Byron and the
292 Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 246.
293 Khachatrian, Aivazovsky Well-Known and Unknown, 160. Aivazovsky painted this picture during
his stay in Tbilisi while living in Mikhail Smirnov’s house. Mikhail Smirnov’s father, a Russian
diplomat, Nikolai Smirnov, met Byron in Italy and thus, almost certainly, Smirnov was to give a
firsthand account of Byron’s contact with the Armenian Fathers on the Island of St. Lazarus. Innes
Merabishvili, “Liberty and Freedom and the Georgian Byron,” in The Reception of Byron in Europe,
ed. Richard A. Cardwell (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), 415.
294 Richard Lansdown and Dosia Reichardt, “Almost as Far as Petersburg: Bryon and Russians,”
Keats-Shelley Journal, 56 (2007): 52-77; Nina Diakonova and Vadim Vatsuro, “No Great Mind and
Generous Heart Could Avoid Byronism: Russian Byron,” in The Reception of Byron in Europe, ed.
Richard A. Cardwell (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), 333-352.
295 Anahit Bekaryan, “Byron and Armenia: A Case of Mirrored Affinities,” in The Reception of Byron
in Europe, ed. Richard A. Cardwell (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), 394.
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Armenian intelligentsia against the Romantic backdrop of Venetian seascape, Byron’s
influential ideas and Aivazovsky’s depiction by bright rays of sunrise share a
deviousness in their allusions to the national awakening.
Conclusion
The first part of this chapter considered the visual representation of the
Armenian “natural” national symbols from Aivazovsky’s gaze during the second half
of the nineteenth century. As the Mount Ararat (as well as Lake Sevan) example
shows, using geographical symbols can be a highly effective way of reconstructing the
nation as an authentic community. This method, in which history and nation are unified
in a common discourse of national identity, naturalizing the nation, is necessary for
the task of uniting nations strongly in time and space. In general, nature and particular
countries contribute greatly to the strengthening of trust in the historical unity of
nations and their resolve in terms of external, physical, and social influences. However,
it is worth noting that the role of landscape in the reconstruction of the nation concept
varies according to time and circumstance. In the case of Aivazovsky’s Armenia, the
Ararat myth gained considerable currency between the 1860s and 1880s when the rise
of Armenian national consciousness found its voice within both the Ottoman and
Russian empires.
Within the Armenian community, at a time of considerable social and political
trepidation, guidance was needed and a sense of endurance and stability gained from
the natural realm in the form of the Ararat hybridization of landscape and biblical
myths. Intellectuals (writers, artists, thinkers, and so on) portrayed this mythscape as
a relentless force capable of determining the character of their nation and of its
inhabitants—an ideological pattern that I also used the terms of “naturalization of the
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nation.” Yet, it should be kept in mind that what and how we see in the natural world
is not (only) natural but a result (also) of what and how we have learnt to see. Per
national foundation myth, that of Ararat was not dependent on truth for its effect. In
fact, as the nineteenth century proceeded and concluded, an Ararat narrative emerged
that was entirely efficacious, which has continued until contemporary times.
How and the supposed character of Armenians a product of the mountains and
why was the Ararat myth believable, even? Answers to this, I believe, are to be found
in the historical imaginaries that had previously contributed to the mythological matrix
of “Armenia.” Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the development of
a nature that was essentially romantic—fostered by the brush of Aivazovsky—
supplied a crucial completion to this synthesizing fusion of the mountain and meaning
with the nation and the past.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, the same dominant concerns permeate the visual
imagery of Armenian victimhood of this period. I have argued, in the second part of
this chapter, two broadly conceived issues: firstly that the visual imagery of, and
related to, the massacres were far more embedded and far more significant, at different
levels, in the Armenian art and culture of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries
than has, to date, been considered in the art-historical study of this period. These
atrocity images set out a very complex relationship between the artist, the spectator,
and the wider public, at the center of which is the production of his proto-national
vision of art, though his use of “plural nations” suggests an expanded sense of national
(indeed, imperial) art, a sense that Aivazovsky had openly pointed to in the 1860s in
his very first Ararat depiction, in seeking to explain “intersected” discourses on his
identity and contradictions in the relationship of “empire” to “nation.” In this context,
the visualization of the massacres also formed one substantial means of articulating
161
the enormously important relationship between the nation and its empire, a relationship
that underwent profound changes during this time. Secondly, through considering a
series of Aivazovsky’s Armenianness-related depictions mainly published in the
Russian journal Fraternal Help, I have attempted to draw attention to how Ottoman–
Armenian victimhood emerged and became established among Russian–Armenian
intellectuals. The instrumentalization of the narrative of drowning burdens by
moonlight against the Romantic background of Constantinople as a personification of
Ottoman–Armenian suffering was utilized to serve the newly constructed nationalist
narrative.
162
CONCLUSION
This dissertation gathers conclusions from multiple subdivisions. First, this
study recaps why and how seascapes contributed successfully to the creation of
identities in Russia and the Black Sea region in the nineteenth century, including the
active role of artists and patrons in creating them. This analysis has shown how
seascapes in the nineteenth-century Black Sea world served the function of those
interested in building and reflecting imperial/national identity, as well as how
prevailing ideologies influenced an imperial/national identity. Next, I consider the
particular role of the seascapes of Aivazovsky in establishing the national religious
identity and then reflect on the capacity of his seascapes to portray a smooth imperial,
then national, past focused on imagination, creativity, memory, and forgetting. I then
follow these observations with some summaries on the seascape.
Owing to the current symbolic significance of seas, such as their ability to
represent life-giving virtues and to reflect the passage of time, seascapes were able to
create a particularly strong imperial, then national, imagery. Modern seascapes
emerged as a genre and then became an important pictorial symbol in close
conjunction with the construction and visualization of imperial and national narratives.
A native of Feodosia, Ivan K. Aivazovsky, the nineteenth century’s nonpareil painter
of Black Sea seascapes, captures the essence of the tempestuous sea and its coastline,
the waves battering against the ancient cliffs of Crimea, the wild water against the
primeval shores that were at last on their way to becoming civilized. While
Aivazovsky’s work was diverse, he is most associated with his seascape paintings.
Through his work and in-depth and original exploration of his historical context, I
explored the interaction of seascapes, geography, art (and its social and commercial
conditions), state policies, and individual as well as local agencies in the shaping of
163
identities in the Black Sea area. Thus, analyzing Aivazovsky’s selected paintings
through the gaze of his multiple identities, this study also sheds light on the history of
peoples living around the body of water known as the Black Sea. In this respect, the
Black Sea is a corridor as well as a border between the Ottoman and Russian empires,
and distinct in all of them, making it an integral part of a whole story as well as one
involved in human interaction and exchange.
The present dissertation is the first scholarly work on Aivazovsky to
systematically apply a set of theoretical frameworks that span history, art history, and
cultural history and that brings our understanding of his work up-to-date with pertinent
fields and issues. Thus, rather than a biography, this is a monograph that takes an
interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-cultural approach, helping shed fresh light
on a significant period in Russian/Ottoman art and culture. This study traces an
underexplored link between the making of seascapes and the shaping of modern
historical imaginations. In general, the visual imagery of, and related to, the sea (the
Black Sea networking) was far more embodied and far more significant, at many
different levels, in the art and cultural history of the nineteenth century than has been
allowed in the art-historical study of this period.
The aesthetic model that Aivazovsky developed (unique seascapes) would
become an important foundation for a new standard of Russian seascape depiction and
appreciation in subsequent years. He did not “discover” a genre of the seascape; rather,
he created a new idealization of the Russian seascape—power over nature—which
made seascapes interesting and admirable to viewers.296 He discovered ways to make
296 Once the new Russian seascape imagery had been definitively established and accepted as a
signifier of nationality in painting, it began to exert an influence in other spheres. From high-culture
venues, it moved into popular journals, tourist guidebooks, children’s literature, postcards, books of
photographs, and advertisements. Ely, This Meager Nature, 223. In the 1890s, popular magazines had
begun to regularly portray the Crimean region as a space for summer recreation among the dachagoing
community. By this point, too, a growing tourist industry had begun to market the Crimean
164
the Black Sea and its countryside aesthetically and accessible to spectators. As this
dissertation emphasizes, while doing this, he did not describe himself as simply
Russian; he was also an Armenian and a Crimean, and he reveals self-understanding
shaped by the space in which he lived and painted. He was a part of a more extensive
empire with strong regionally intersected identities. I have argued that seascapes of the
Black Sea geography made significant contributions to the formation of the identity
construction process. Nevertheless, this process did not usually occur naturally or
unintentionally but was the result of more or less coordinated and deliberate efforts on
the part of the artist and the patrons to produce art that would provide an acceptable
image of the empire and then the nation. Thus, in the nineteenth-century Black Sea
world, the creation of a “national” seascape was the outcome of conscious programs
carried out by cohesive networks of an artist and influential patrons to create an
imagery of the region.
Religion’s role in the creation and development of national identity has been
discussed in studies on nationalism since Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson,297 and
others made clear that they regarded the concept of nationalism as, in some way, a
heroic replacement for religious authority, while other historians298 have successively
debated that religion could be an essential/integral part of nationalism. This
dissertation has also demonstrated an intimate connection was constructed between
Christianity (with a particular emphasis on the Orthodox sect) and imperial/national
identity in some of Aivazovsky’s seascapes and landscapes. Nautical geography has
coastal regions (Feodosia, Yalta, Alupka, Alushta, and so on) as destinations for leisure travel. The
expansion of travel and tourism meant that more and more people were beginning to experience their
own seacoasts for the first time.
297 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Anderson, Imagined Communities.
298 Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Anthony D. Smith, Chosen People (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003); Tricia Cusack, “‘Tis the Wild Things that Have the Real Beauty’: Jack B.
Yeats, Modernity and Other Worlds,” Irish Review 21 (Autumn, Winter, 1997): 75-91.
165
commonly been identified with divinities possessing qualities such as the power of
fertility or the ability to heal. With the advent of the monotheistic religions, the waters
acquired new narratives, and existing stories were modified. The story of the deluge,
Noah’s Ark, and the Mount Ararat narratives were appropriated as components of
national identity, as represented in the seascapes of Aivazovsky.
Furthermore, as Tricia Cusack mentions, religion was used to exempt certain
inhabitants of the national territory from full nationality, and this exclusive religious
nationalism was symbolically emphasized in land/seascapes.299 In Aivazovsky’s case,
specifically depicted in Chapter IV, Mount Ararat, whose skirts were topographically
part of the nineteenth-century Ottoman imperial domain, was appropriated as a
Christian mountain (the salvation of humanity after the deluge), and a conservative
Orthodoxy was reflected in art and art patronage. Efforts to facilitate cultural
homogeneity and enforce ethnic exclusivity were supported by Aivazovsky’s
land/seascapes that contained apparent symbolisms, such as the Prophet Noah and his
descendants, or represented the kind of simple mountain/river view that was read as
an expression of Christian modesty.
My work also explores Aivazovsky’s seascapes reconstructing the
representation of the political and cultural dynamics of Russo–Ottoman relations and
reveals Aivazovsky’s understanding of and interaction with his Armenian identity.
Paying close attention to his renderings of Armenian mythscapes and resonant, yet
rarely researched, images that he produced for international humanitarian campaigns,
I explore the relationships between discursive politics, art, and the shaping of modern
Armenian identity. In this area, Aivazovsky’s art facilitated processes of building
contextual cultural identifications and of cross-cultural and cross-imperial interaction.
299 Cusack, Riverscapes, 193.
166
The Russian seascape genre presented as a set of nineteenth-century cultural
representations supplied by a single individual invites the interpretation of terrain in
terms of a homeland narrative. Aivazovsky’s seascapes in particular but also his
landscapes used the power of painting to imagine recognizable scenarios yet creative
sceneries that subtly inculcated their future audiences with new subjects of the nation.
By turns, depending on the location and historical context, the Russian, the Armenian,
and the Crimean land/seascapes were perceived as a vast empire with widely varying
types of terrain: an Arcadian retreat, a favored Holy Land, a boundless expanse, a
collection of nostalgic and unpretentious spaces, and a place to experience scenery and
leisure.
The seascape also helped to determine the direction of the nation’s selfregarding
and forgetful gaze toward either a past paradigm or an ideal future. Certain
alternative constructions of Aivazovsky’s sea- and landscapes have received attention
here. First, there was the image of Russia as a maritime empire. Aivazovsky played a
crucial role in shifting the prevalent thinking, to imagine the empire as a sea-based
power. Second, there was the image of Russia as a glorious naval power in the Black
Sea, through the depictions of naval battles, which often appeared in Aivazovsky’
oeuvre, appealing to the empire, the ruler, and the people of Russia. Third, there were
the land/seascapes of the Armenian nation, the images of both the religious and the
proto-nationalist were created and used in different ways to depict the entire empire
with its interconnected populations. Each of these visions was related to, but somewhat
peripheral from, the primarily aesthetic images described in the preceding chapters.
Aivazovsky’s images of Russian land- and seascapes often corresponded with
grander visions of the land and sea themselves. In the context of the search for national
identity, the sea came to be imagined according to certain idealized models. Whether
167
Russia was conceived of as a rural pastoral nation, Holy Rus, or the native home of
the Russian peasant, such dreams and visions of Russia did exist before Aivazovsky
as well as during his era. However, with Aivazovsky’s images, seascape imagery
became a visible manifestation of the ideal of Russian nationhood as a rising maritime
nation. Yet, as such, images of Aivazovsky unavoidably contained an uncomfortable
mixture of idealization and reality. Can it be any wonder that Russia’s seascapes
evolved into an array of different, and often contradictory, forms? The seascape image
was a moment of crystallization. It was a pivotal point at which Russia, as an
abstraction, put itself to the test as a visual and potentially realizable space.
Several different sea- and landscapes were produced by Aivazovsky to
correspond with the variety of different approaches to Russian identity developed in
the nineteenth century. And yet, as I have been arguing all along, one image (or more
accurately, a set of related images) of the national nautical terrain came to dominate
Russian imagination. This was the seascape of the southern shores of the empire,
terrain associated with naval supremacy, while the triumphal Russian naval
battlefields, with the rising ship industry, implied a special Russian sense of power.
The national seascape of the national consciousness thus emerged; a national portrait
of the Russian native represented in the watery geography.
Yet, interestingly, as an artist who had a successful career inside the Russian
Empire, Aivazovsky was successful in utilizing national narratives of the empire to
depict a regional identity. His Armenian-related oeuvre can be acknowledged in this
regard. Further, what was primarily intended as images of heroic feats became, during
the nineteenth century, more aesthetic recognition, a routine and conventional way of
seeing the special beauty of both the Russian and Armenian lands and seas.
168
Establishing and naturalizing essential aspects of nationality, seascapes have
played a vital role. Individuals and networks that seek to create a collective culture and
identity have carefully channeled the flow of national history. However, national
histories appear to be inaccurate because they create a comfortable and self-supporting
narrative, which is reflected in visual imagery.300 My study, therefore, has recovered
and highlighted the complexity of multiple intersecting contexts, a versatile and highly
successful artist, and an oeuvre more diverse than usually remembered at a historical
moment on the eve of, but also still before, the cultural hegemony of the nation.
Contextualizing Aivazovsky and his work as “in-between” and “across”—rather than
as already (or still) securely embedded within the nation (or empire)—helps us to
revise our conventional approaches not only to his oeuvre and influence but also to the
Black Sea region as the site of alternative and productive cultural mappings and as
nexus of entangled cultures, both the Islamic and Christian, perpetually in dialogue
throughout the long nineteenth century.
Aivazovsky: An Artistic Legacy
The problem in attempting a summary of Aivazovsky’s significance is
manifest. Both his paintings and his written oeuvre (letters, official biographies as
kinds of autobiographies) confound easy answers. In both spheres, his output can be
regarded as that of Romantic imperialist or a traditionalist, a cosmopolitan or a
nationalist, a utilitarian or an adherent of artistic autonomy. Aivazovsky ran the range
of artistic genres. In the critical and Russian public eye, however, he was then, as now,
most consistently associated with scenes of Romantic sea- and landscapes.
Undoubtedly, in Russia, he was one of the most successful, professionally and
personally, painters of his age.
300 Ibid., 196.
169
As Aivazovsky entered his seventies in the 1890s, he had cause to be satisfied
with his career. He had been at the forefront of his profession for over fifty years, and
his astute engagement with the art market and management of his personal finances
had made him independently wealthy. Far from resting on his achievements, however,
he continued to develop and diversify his artistic practice, giving fresh impetus to
themes and subjects that had preoccupied him from his youth. This is above all true of
the sequence of extraordinary marine paintings he exhibited into the 1890s, Niagara
Falls [figure 66], Moonrise: The First Train in Feodosia [figure 67],301 The Explosion
of the Turkish Ship [figure 69],302 Sappho [figure 70], and Flood in Sudak [figure 71].
All of these underlines once again the sea as a prime site through which to address
timeless issues such as death, destruction, cruelty, and hope, as well as science and
industrialization, while exalting human insistence and creativity in the face of nature’s
overwhelming power.
On one level, Aivazovsky was continually refreshing previous themes and
subjects, even as he continued to explore new ones, such as the Atlantic Ocean
series.303 Aivazovsky and his wife went to Europe on a large ocean liner. On the way,
the ship was caught in a storm. In the raging ocean, the waves tossed the ship like a
splinter. Almost all of the passengers hid in their cabins in horror, while the artist, his
301 Aivazovsky realized various projects for his native city, Feodosia, including a seaport and a
railway line, which he worked hard on to manifest. In 1892, the first trains traveled from Feodosia to
St. Petersburg construction was commence on the port, which was completed by 1894. It was this
fulfillment of the painter’s debt to home, therefore, that was represented in the Moonrise image.
Enthralled by the visual realization of scientific discovery, Aivazovsky changed nothing in the
landscape—the sky, the bay, and the slopes of the mountain remained the same—but return opened a
new chapter of its life. My photograph taken in 2017 [figure 68] from the identical perspective of this
painting in Feodosia indicates Aivazovsky’s legacy in both the history of the art and urban settings.
Fixed by the bay and mountain behind the trees, the silhouette of the city has little changed (just the
lane before the sea has been widened).
302 Aivazovsky’s last canvas is also known as Explosion [figure 72] but was never completed.
According to biographies, he was depicting the explosion of a Turkish ship. Sargsyan, The Life of the
Great Marine Painter, 251-252.
303 V. V. Polyakov, Альбом Выставки Академии художеств Айвазовского: “Ниагара” и
“Атлантический Океан” [Album Exhibition of the Academy of Arts; Aivazovsky: “Niagara” and
“Atlantic Ocean”] (St. Petersburg, 1893).
170
wife, and a few other daredevils remained on the deck. They watched with admiration
the formidable element. The next day, when the storm had subsided and the ocean
calmed, Aivazovsky sat down in front of the easel set on the deck and, in the presence
of the amazed passengers, began to draw on a large canvas the storm he had seen.304
This painting has received wide recognition for its artistic merit: the Russian
newspaper Север [North] in 1893 respected the artist’s courage and diligence, as well
as the high artistry of his works. Nikolai Barsamov mentions this event: “The artist’s
last trip to America proved this with striking clarity, the mighty expanse of the ocean
made a strong impression on him, and this impression right there, on the deck steamer,
expressed in a big picture.”305 The Atlantic Ocean [figure 73] canvas represents a wide
and endless expanse of water. In an effort to vividly and convincingly depict the
features of the nature of the ocean, the artist in this canvas significantly overcame the
elements of showiness observed in previous works. The picture is distinguished by its
grandeur and a new compositional solution. It also has an autobiographical content.306
Given the autobiographical context of this painting and the claims, it thus appears to
show the artist as an interpreter of the natural world.
Prospective generations of artists might study how Aivazovsky’s approach to
land/seascape art prompted his ambitious oeuvre, a life project which emphasized that
the role of past masters was to inspire originality in contemporary practice, rather than
serve as a model to be slavishly imitated. Thus, this dissertation challenges the
paradigm of Aivazovsky as a copier,307 and, in terms of marine painting, this study
304 Ibid., 221.
305 Barsamov, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 135.
306 Sargsyan mentions that this autobiographical content fell out of the attention of the artist’s
biographers (specifically he gives a quotation from Barsamov’s 1962 biography). Meanwhile, the
artist portrayed himself, his wife, several sailors and passengers. The artist’s widow, who lived in
Feodosia until 1944, also testified to this. Sargsyan, The Life of the Great Marine Painter, 221.
307 Aivazovsky was regarded as a copier of Western seascape artists by many art historians, including
the famous Russian artist and writer Alexandre Benois. He indicates: “The most interesting figure
among the Russian landscape painters of the 1840s and 1850s is Aivazovsky, who was influenced by
171
shows how Aivazovsky was acting in the 1880s and 1890s as his own “past master,”
resulting in works that were not only varied in their subject matter and formal qualities
but, as exemplified by the critical fortunes of Atlantic Ocean and his depicted
explosions, could also, in turn, delight and revolt, inspire and provoke. One might
argue that by including both of these paintings in his legacy, Aivazovsky was
guaranteeing that the precise nature of his artistic inheritance would remain settled and
stopped to be debated.
Toward the end of his career, Aivazovsky was thus being absorbed into a long
tradition associated specifically with marine artists, one that placed a premium on
firsthand experience and heroic catastrophe. The attraction of such a tradition for
Aivazovsky may, in part, relate to the reputation of British and French marine artists
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who—like J.M.W. Turner, Nicholas
Pocock, and Dominic Serres—had been at sea in the navy or merchant service, and the
assumed accuracy and thus authority that their images had as a result. As the
appreciation of Aivazovsky’s distinctive articulation continued to grow, the vast range
and variety of his marine subjects offered countless pointers for a new generation of
artists that followed Aivazovsky’s restless example by exploring new and selfconscious,
modern ways of representing the marine geography.
a Romantic spirit stronger than his fellow-artists, and who is favorably distinguished from his
moderate and reasonable comrades by his passion for the sea. But even Aivazovsky does not stand
comparison with the West. He is only a poor copier from such magnificent connoisseurs of the sea
such as Théodore Gudin and Eugène Louis Isabey. As to his “grandiose conceptions” they repeat the
setting and the style of Turner’s follower, John Martin, who was one of the favorite painters of the
Romantic epoch.” Alexandre Benois, The Russian School of Painting, with an introduction by
Christian Brinton (New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1916), 151-153. However, I believe, contextualizing
Aivazovsky and his works as “in-between” and “across,” rather than as already embedded within the
notion of Romantic reproduction, helps us revise our understanding his oeuvre and influence.
172
A Final Word: The Crimean Legacy and Staging the Black Sea
Neither the Ottoman nor the Russian empires exist today; even the Soviet
Union has collapsed, and the new Russian “meta-geographical” orientation toward
Crimea is still under discussion. However, the strategies that Aivazovsky developed
to create a new Black Sea identity have become hallmark indicators of art and politics.
The establishment of a new Russian seascape imagery, which has come to be accepted
as a signifier of nationality in painting (as well as in literature), led to influence in other
spheres.
By the turn of the new twentieth century, the images produced to aestheticize
the national terrain had become a cornerstone in Russian popular culture, from ballet
or opera set design, images moved into popular journals, postcards, photographic
albums, tourist guidebooks, and advertisements. For instance, the postcards from early
twentieth century Feodosia illustrate how the visual narratives of Aivazovsky’s
paintings documenting the land/seascapes of the Crimean region migrated out of the
confines of the frames and returned in the form of new media and as scenic postcards
[figure 74; figure 75; figure 76; figure 77; figure 78; and figure 79].
It is important to understand the legacy of Aivazovsky that framed and
articulated the visual contents of these scenes when they acquired a second life as
postcards. The visual continuity between Aivazovsky’s canvases and the postcards
reveals how, first, imperialist, then proto-nationalist narratives became surrounded by
descriptions citing enduring clichés. The symbol of Crimea resurrected the dream of
Catherine II (“Greek Project”), adding significant implications to the “Byzantine”
paradigm of legitimization. The mid-nineteenth century celebrated this, as a locus of
patriotic heroism after the Crimean War: “Crimea remerged on the intellectual horizon
of the traditionalist intelligentsia as a place of reconnection with Russia’s true cultural
173
roots as contrasted to Western Europe.”308 Apart from Peter the Great’s opening of the
window to the West on the Baltic, the annexation of Crimea manifested the overall
reorientation of imperial policy toward Black Sea area by the time of Catherine II.
Beginning in the 1800s, and especially during and following the Crimean War,
geopolitical visions were recontextualized through Uvarov’s official ideology,
“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality,” related absolute monarchy and imperial
loyalty with the Christian faith, a representation of which—the baptismal font of
Prince Vladimir the Saint—was rediscovered in Chersonesus in Crimea.
Interconnected with Sevastopol’s reputation as a place of military glory and fulfillment
of Russia’s history as a maritime empire, this religious myth promoted the centrality
of the Crimean region to Russian imperial identity. In this respect, it is important to
see how Aivazovsky’s paintings contributed to cultural practices that signify enduring
power relations and attempted to place the viewer in a closer, more intimate
relationship with the surrounding land/seascape. These postcards, as legacies of
Aivazovsky’s scenery, would sustain and survive the Russian Empire to merge with
new ideologies in the formation of the Soviet Union.
After the fall of the Russian Empire, both Aivazovsky’s paintings and the
postcards continued to be displayed. New spectators interpolated the ideologies
operating in these postcards as citizens of the new Soviet Union. Yet, they learned to
apply the cultural codes and signifiers in operation in these postcards (and formerly
paintings) to sentiments of territorial possession and belonging associated with a new
Black Sea identity fostered by both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
308 Suslov, “Crimea is Ours,” 591.
174
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193
Figure 1 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonlight Night on the Crimea Gurzuf, 1839,
oil on canvas, 101 x 136 cm, Private Collection
FIGURES
194
Figure 2 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Yalta, 1838,
oil on canvas, 47 x 67 cm, National Art Gallery, Feodosia
195
Figure 3 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Old Feodosia, 1839,
oil on canvas, 46.7 x 66.1 cm, National Art Gallery, Feodosia
196
Figure 4 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Landing at Subashi, 1839,
oil on canvas, 97 x 66 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
197
Figure 5 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sveaborg, 1844,
oil on canvas 115 x 188 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
198
Figure 6 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Reval from the 1843 Roadstead, 1844,
oil on canvas, 118 x 188 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
199
Figure 7 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, View of Odessa on a Moonlit Night, 1846,
oil on canvas, 122 x 190 cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
200
Figure 8 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonlit Night on the Seashore, 1849,
oil on canvas, 123 x 192 cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
201
Figure 9 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sunset at the Crimean Shores, 1856,
oil on canvas, 58 x 83 cm, Private Collection
202
Figure 10 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, View in Oreanda, 1858,
oil on wood, 34 x 27 cm (oval), Peterhof Museum Preserve, St. Petersburg
203
Figure 11 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonlit Night in the Crimea, 1859,
oil on canvas, 56.4 x 76 cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
204
Figure 12 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Arrival of Catherine II in Feodosia, 1883,
oil on canvas, 196 x 220 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
205
Figure 13 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Black Sea, 1881,
oil on canvas, 149 x 208, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
206
Figure 14 – The Black Sea, view from the balcony of Aivazovsky’s estate,
photography by the author
207
Figure 15 – The Chesme Hall at the Grand Palace in Petergof, St. Petersburg
208
Figure 16 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Battle of Çeşme at Night, 1848,
oil on canvas, 183 × 193 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
209
Figure 17 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Naval Battle at Chios, 1848,
oil on canvas, 220 × 190 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
210
Figure 18 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Battle of Navarino on 8 October 1827, 1846,
oil on canvas, 221 × 331 cm, Naval Engineering Institute, St. Petersburg
211
Figure 19 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Mercury Brig Meeting the Russian Squadron
After Her Victory over Two Turkish Vessels, 1848,
oil on canvas, 123.5 × 190 cm, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
212
Figure 20 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Brig Mercury Attacked by Two Turkish Ships, 1892,
oil on canvas, 216 × 344 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
213
Figure 21 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Battle of Sinop, 1853,
oil on canvas, 220 × 331 cm, Central Naval Museum, Saint Petersburg
214
Figure 22 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sinop. Night After the Battle on 18 November 1853, 1853,
oil on canvas, 331 × 220 cm, Central Naval Museum
215
Figure 23 – Top: Ivan K. Aivazovsky’s depictions of Osman Pasha and Adil Bey
216
Figure 24 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Siege of Sevastopol, 1854,
oil on canvas, 33 × 73 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
217
Figure 25 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Malakhov Burial Mound, 1893,
oil on canvas, 51.5 × 73.5 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
218
Figure 26 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Russian Squadron on the Sevastopol Roadstead, 1846,
oil on canvas, 121 × 191 cm, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
219
Figure 27 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Squadron of the Black Sea Fleet Entering the Sevastopol
Roadstead, 1895,
oil on canvas, 98 × 150 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
220
Figure 28 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Battle Between Steamer Vesta and the Turkish
Battleship Feth-i Bülend on the Black Sea on 11 July 1877, 1895,
oil on canvas, 99 × 124 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
221
Figure 29 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Cutters of the Steamship Grand Duke Konstantin
Attacking the Turkish Battleship Asâr-ı Şevket on the Sukhumi Roadstead on 12
August 1877, 1877,
oil on canvas, 98 × 123 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
222
Figure 30 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Alexander II Crossing the Danube, 1878,
oil on canvas, 62 × 92 cm, Private Collection
223
Figure 31 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Imperial Fleet in front of Çırağan Palace, 1875,
oil on canvas, 130 × 193 cm, Dolmabahçe Palace Painting Museum, Istanbul
224
Figure 32 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Ottoman Fleet, 1874,
oil on canvas, 72 x 59 cm, Dolmabahçe Palace Painting Museum, Istanbul
225
Figure 33 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Ottoman Fleet, 1875,
oil on canvas, 71 x 97 cm, Dolmabahçe Palace Painting Museum, Istanbul
226
Figure 34 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Peter the Great at Krasnaya Gorka Lighting a
Bonfire on the Shore to Signal His Ships in Distress, 1846,
oil on canvas, 223 x 335 cm, The Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg
227
Figure 35 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Battle of Reval, 1846,
oil on canvas, 221 x 331 cm, Naval Engineering Institute, St. Petersburg
228
Figure 36 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Shipwreck of the Ingermanland in the Skagerrak on the
Night of 31 August 1842, 1860s,
oil on canvas, 98 x 126.5 cm, Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg
229
Figure 37 – Ilya E. Repin, Wide World, 1903,
oil on canvas, 179 x 284.5 cm, the Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg
230
Figure 38 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850,
oil on canvas, 221 x 332 cm, The Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg
231
Figure 39 – Théodore Géricault, The Raft of Medusa, 1818 and 1819,
oil on canvas, 491 x 716 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris
232
Figure 40 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Rainbow, 1873,
oil on canvas, 102 x 132 cm, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
233
Figure 41 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Wave, 1889,
oil on canvas, 304 x 505 cm, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
234
Figure 42 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Storm at Cape Aya, 1875,
oil on canvas, 215 x 315 cm, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
235
Figure 43 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Shipwreck, 1876,
oil on canvas, 132.7 x 170 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
236
Figure 44 – Arnold Böcklin, Isle of Dead, 1880,
oil on canvas, 110.9 x 156.4 cm, Kunstmuseum, Basel
237
Figure 45 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Icebergs in the Atlantic, 1870,
oil on canvas, 110.5 x 130.5 cm, Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosia
238
Figure 46 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The World Flood, 1864,
oil on canvas, 246.5 x 319 cm, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
239
Figure 47 – Gustave Doré, The Deluge,
Frontispiece to Doré’s illustrated edition of the Bible. Based
on the story of Noah’s Ark. Reprinted from the Holy Bible:
Containing the Old and New Testaments according to
authorized version
240
Figure 48 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Chaos: The Creation, 1841,
oil on canvas, 73 x 48 cm, Monastery of St Lazarro, Venice
241
Figure 49 – Robert Ker Porter, View of the Fortress of Erivan and Ararat, 1821,
drawing, executed for the book Sir Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia
Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, etc. during the years 1817, 1818, 1819 and 1820
(London: Longman, 1821)
242
Figure 50 – F. Parrot, View of Ararat and the Monastery of Echmiadzin, c. 1834,
drawing, executed for the book Friedrich Parrot, A Journey to Ararat, trans. William
Desborough Cooley (London: Longman, 1845)
243
Figure 51 – H. F. B. Lynch, Ararat from the Lake Echmiadzin, c. 1901,
drawing, executed for the book H. F. B. Lynch, Armenia, ravels and studies: With 197
illustrations, reproduced from photographs and sketches by the author, numerous
maps and plans, a bibliography, and a map of Armenia and adjacent countries
(Beirut: Khayats, 1967)
244
Figure 52 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Araks River and Ararat, 1875,
oil on canvas, 40 x 64 cm, Private Collection
245
Figure 53 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Mount Ararat, 1868,
oil on canvas, 124.5 x 167.5 cm, Private Collection
246
Figure 54 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Lake Sevan, 1869,
oil on canvas, 98 × 120 cm, Private Collection
247
Figure 55 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Mount Ararat, 1885,
oil on canvas, 23 x 34 cm, Museum of Armenian Congregation of Mikhitarists, St. Lazarus
Island, Venice
248
Figure 56 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Descent of Noah from Ararat, 1889,
oil on canvas, 128 x 218 cm, National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan
249
Figure 57 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Catholicos M. Khrimian in the
Neighborhood of Echmiadzin, 1895,
oil on canvas, 155 x 101 cm, Aivazovsky National Gallery, Feodosia
250
Figure 58 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Massacre of the Armenians in Trebizond 1895, 1897,
tinted engraving, executed for the book Fraternal Help for the Suffering Armenians in Turkey
[Братская Помощь в Турции Армянам], 1898, p. xxxvii
251
Figure 59 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Turks Load Armenians onto the Ship, 1897,
engraving, executed for the book Fraternal Help for the Suffering Armenians in Turkey
[Братская Помощь в Турции Армянам], Pt. II, p. 78
252
Figure 60 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Turks Offload the Armenians into the Sea of
Marmara, 1897,
engraving, executed for the book Fraternal Help for the Suffering Armenians in
Turkey [Братская Помощь в Турции Армянам], Pt. II, p. 79
253
Figure 61 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Noah’s Descent from Ararat, 1898,
engraving, executed for the book Fraternal Help for the Suffering Armenians in Turkey
[Братская Помощь в Турции Армянам], 1898, p. 42
254
Figure 62 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Descent of Noah from Ararat after the Great Flood, 1892,
oil on canvas, 105 x 182 c, Armenian Patriarchate, Istanbul
255
Figure 63 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Quiet Night: Armenians Thrown Overboard, 1897,
oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, Private Collection
256
Figure 64 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Night: The Tragedy at the Sea of Marmara, 1897,
oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, Collection of Djemaran School, Beirut
257
Figure 65 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Byron on the Island of San Lazzaro, 1899,
oil on canvas, 133 x 218 cm, National Gallery of Armenia, Erivan
258
Figure 66 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Niagara Falls, 1893,
oil on canvas, 126 x 164 cm, Aivazovsky National Gallery, Feodosia
259
Figure 67 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Moonrise: The First Train in Feodosia, 1892,
oil on canvas, 96 x 194.5 cm, Aivazovsky National Gallery, Feodosia
260
Figure 68 – Railway in Feodosia, photography by the author
261
Figure 69 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Explosion of the Turkish Ship, 1892,
oil on canvas, 124 x 90.4 cm, Sotheby’s London
262
Figure 70 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Sappho, 1893,
oil on canvas, 165 x 125 cm, Private Collection
263
Figure 71 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Flood in Sudak, 1897,
oil on canvas, 106 x 141 cm, Aivazovsky National Gallery, Feodosia
264
Figure 72 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, The Explosion of a Ship [uncompleted], 1900,
oil on canvas, 69 x 99 cm, Aivazovsky National Gallery, Feodosia
265
Figure 73 – Ivan K. Aivazovsky, Atlantic Ocean, 1896,
oil on canvas, 67.5 x 100 cm, The Fine Art Museum, Arkhangelsk
266
Figure 74 – Aivazovsky House and Painting Gallery, early 20th century, scenic postcard,
reprinted from Dmitry Losev, “Father of the Town, Ivan Aivazovsky and Feodosia: A
Lifelong Attachment,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54 (January 2017): 74-83
267
Figure 75 – Monument-Fountain, Feodosia, early 20th century, scenic postcard,
reprinted from Dmitry Losev, “Father of the Town, Ivan Aivazovsky and Feodosia:
A Lifelong Attachment,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54 (January 2017): 74-83
268
Figure 76 – The Aivazovsky Fountain, early 20th century, scenic postcard,
reprinted from Dmitry Losev, “Father of the Town, Ivan Aivazovsky and Feodosia:
A Lifelong Attachment,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54 (January 2017): 74-83
269
Figure 77 – The grave of Aivazovsky, early 20th century, scenic postcard,
reprinted from Dmitry Losev, “Father of the Town, Ivan Aivazovsky and Feodosia:
A Lifelong Attachment,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54 (January 2017): 74-83
270
Figure 78 – The Armenian Church of St. Sarkis and the grave of Aivazovsky, early 20th
century, scenic postcard,
reprinted from Dmitry Losev, “Father of the Town, Ivan Aivazovsky and Feodosia: A
Lifelong Attachment,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54 (January 2017): 74-83
271
Figure 79 – Panoramic view of Feodosia, early 20th century, scenic postcard,
reprinted from Dmitry Losev, “Father of the Town, Ivan Aivazovsky and Feodosia:
A Lifelong Attachment,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 54 (January 2017): 74-83