ÉCOLE DE PARIS AND OTHER MASTERS
10 April 2024
◎ 18. AIVAZOVSKY, IVAN (1817-1900)
Off the Southern Coast, signed and dated 1893.
Oil on canvas, 53 by 83 cm.
SOLD FOR 514,000 GBP
Provenance: Russian Art Paintings, Sotheby’s London, 12 June 2007, lot 38.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Exhibited: Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovskii. K 200-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, The Russian State Museum, St Petersburg, 22 December 2016-20 March 2017.
Literature: G. Caffiero, I. Samarine, Water and Sky. The Paintings of Ivan Aivazovsky, London, Alexandria Press, 2012, p. 237, pl. 170, illustrated; p. 320, No. CS-1893-007, illustrated and listed.
Exhibition Catalogue, E. Petrova, G. Goldovsky, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovskii. K 200-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, St Petersburg, Palace Editions, 2016, p. 12, illustrated.
Ivan Aivazovsky was a true virtuoso in the use of colour, a gift he displays to the full in his 1893 painting Off the Southern Coast. In this work, as in many of his paintings, the artist strives to convey the complex interaction of light and air and to render the atmosphere on a warm seashore in the most vivid way possible. The dazzling resonance of the painting’s colours, with the smooth tonal transitions from golden to a cooler light blue in the background and the rich tints of turquoise, deeper white and brown in the foreground, which break up the surface of the picture, all create an extraordinary depth and a sensation of the limitlessness of the sea.
The combination of landscape with a genre scene imparts a special atmosphere and lyricism to the painting. Aivazovsky often used this device, so beloved by the public, to lend variety to his marine paintings. Nevertheless, the bustle of everyday life is subordinated to the overall rhythm of the composition. The manner in which elements of genre painting and seascape coexist so naturally, and the highly emotive handling of colour, based on noble dark blues and greys, express a romantic ideal of a natural way of life, which the artist strove to convey in all his canvasses. This is a work of Aivazovsky’s mature years, which may be regarded as one of the benchmarks of the artist’s oeuvre.
The present lot as illustrated and listed in the publication by G. Caffiero and I. Samarine
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