I chanced upon some works of art,
what attracted me to the pictures was the totally realistic way the artist had painted the waves in two shipwreck scenes, to me it is just amazing how that artist has given the wave such a translucent and life like look,
even more so when I found out the artist did no preliminary sketches, many of his paintings were painted from memory and I read he could not draw a man! the painter in question is Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900), he was was born into the family of a merchant of Armenian origin in the town of Feodosia, Crimea, his parents were under strained circumstances and he spent his childhood in poverty, with the help of people who had noticed the talented youth, he entered the Simpheropol gymnasium, and then the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he took the landscape painting course and was especially interested in marine landscapes,
in the autumn of 1836 Aivazovsky presented 5 marine pictures to the Academic exhibition, which were highly appreciated, in 1837, Aivazovsky received the Major Gold Medal for Calm in the Gulf of Finland (1836) and The Great Roads at Kronstadt (1836), which allowed him to go on a long study trip abroad, however the artist first went to the Crimea to perfect himself in his chosen genre by painting the sea and views of Crimean coastal towns,
due to his long life in art, Aivazovsky became the most prolific Russian painter of his time, he is also said to be the most forged of all Russian painters, he left over 6,000 works at his death in 1900, just think until today I had never even heard of him, but what a talent he had.
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