It is a plumb nonsense to choose merely one Aivazovsky painting from the six thousands of his oeuvre. It is not just because of his paintings’ subject is almost the same, the sea, but because they are all delightful and wonderful. So therefore I chose one of his dynamic paintings.
Aivazovsky was an Armenian marine painter, a well-admired and honored artist in the nineteenth century. He was the official painter in the Royal Russian Navy and frequently accompanied the army to the sea fights. Like a photojournalist today, he diligently recorded naval battles with absolute perfection. He created winter landscapes and biblical scenes as well.
He painted the sea in his whole life. He painted scummy waves, stormy seas, ship battles, calm harbors, rips and tides in a romantic manner with realistic details. Nobody could paint the diaphanous water and the rippling sea like him. His waves are perfect masterpieces, maybe too perfect.
I see less meaning into his paintings than into Turner’s ones, because of the masterly finishing of Aivazovsky did. If I see everything entirely, the scene and the figures, if everything is completely depicted, then I have nothing left to visualize. It is as if a writer writes everything down and leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination. So where am I, the receiver? What is my role then? I would just say “nice painting” and would go to the next one without any deeper sensation in my mind.
I like the delicate colors in Aivazovsky’s painting. The light pinkish background makes a soft tone, and the beautiful pastel water almost tenderly tosses the ship as if a mother would do. The ship’s unbalanced position and her ghostly appearance project a tragic denouement. The seagull at the rainbow could mean something better, since in dream symbol seagull associated with persistence.
Nonetheless, the people in the boats watching the ship’s last battle with the elements signify our delicacy and subservience against Mother Nature whatever we think on the contrary. As a poet once wrote:
