Ivan Aivazovsky

«The Sea is my life. Live I three hundred of years – always would find in the sea something new» (I.K. Aivazovsky).

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky was born on 17 July 1817 (29 July New Style) in the ancient Crimean town of Feodosia, where his father, an Armenian by nationality, had settled at the very beginning of the century. His father was a relatively well-educated man who knew several oriental languages, and who, though a trader of small means, played a significant part in the commercial life of the town. Unfortunately the plague epidemic which hit Feodosia in 1812 wrecked his business, and when the future artist was born, the family had indeed fallen on hard times. There is some evidence to suggest that poverty obliged the young Aivazovsky to work in the cosmopolitan coffee-shops of Feodosia, alive with the chatter of many different tongues: Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian and Tartar. The young boy's eager mind soaked up all the colourful sights and sounds which Feodosia with its mixed population had to offer. He also had a keen musical ear and soon learned to play folk melodies on the violin. Later Aivazovsky recalled some of thesemelodies for his composer friend Mikhail Glinka, who used them in his compositions. It was drawing, however, which most seized the young boy's imagination: lacking other materials he drew in charcoal on the whitewashed walls of Feodosia. These drawings attracted the attention of A. Kaznacheyev, the town-governor, who helped Aivazovsky to enter the high school at Simferopol and in 1833, the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he took the landscape painting course and was especially interested in marine landscapes.