Hovhannes Aivazovsky’s works at int’l auctions

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Arrival of Columbus' Flotilla, 1880, was sold at Sotheby’s for $1,665,000 in April 2008. The canvas was exhibited at The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Describing the painting, the auction house said that the artist captures with drama and majesty the arrival of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria to American shores. Aivazovsky's palette captures the early morning light with stunning effect, softly and slowly illuminating the composition, as if bringing the scene to life before the viewer's eyes. In this way, this masterpiece creates an eloquent metaphor of a world in its first moment of discovery, untarnished, a future without limits.

The Arrival of Columbus' Flotilla

St. Isaac’s Cathedral on a Cold Day, 1981, sold at Christie's for £1,125,000 in 2004.

St. Isaac’s Cathedral on a Cold Day

The painting of Saint Petersburg’s biggest cathedral was the most expensive Aivazovsky's work sold before 2007, when American Shipping off the Rock of Gibraltar, 1873, fetched £2,700,000. It’s noteworthy that Aivazovasky depicted an American ship crossing the waters of the Mediterranean 30 years after he visited the scene, reproducing it with his genius imagination.

American Shipping off the Rock of Gibraltar

View of Constantinople, 1852, sold at Christie’s for £1,63 million in November 2006.

View of Constantinople

The Varangians on the Dnieper, 1876, sold at Christie’s for £1,7 million.

The Varangians on the Dnieper

Distributing Supplies and The Relief Ship, 1892, were sold at Sotheby’s for $2,393 million in April 2008. In Distributing Supplies, Aivazovsky depicts the delivery of provisions to his birthplace of Feodosiya, a port city on the Black Sea. In The Relief Ship, Aivazovsky illustrates what may be the arrival of W.C. Edgar, editor of The Northwestern Miller, to Petersburg in the spring of 1892, and he depicts the approaching steamship with two flags—the Russian Navy flag and the American Stars and Stripes—as a gesture of Russo-American solidarity.

Distributing Supplies

On January 9, 1893, Ivan Aivazovsky presented these two paintings—The Relief Ship and Distributing Supplies—as a gift to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., which was then widely considered the equivalent of a national museum.

The Relief Ship

View of Constantinople and the Bosporus, 1856, sold to an anonymous buyer for a record price of £3,233 million (estimate £1,2-1,8 million) on April 24, 2012.

View of Constantinople and the Bosporus

The other works by Hovhannes Aivazovsky sold at prestigious auction houses were: Galata Tower by Moonlight, 1845 (£825,250); Shepherds with their Flock at Sunset, 1859 (£657,250); Sunset over Ischia, 1857 (£623,650); Storm over the Black Sea, 1893 (£341,000); Winter Landscape, 1876 (£277,000); Gibraltar by Night, 1844 (£385,000).

Besides, according to some sources, current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko bought Aivazovsky’s Constantinople at Down painting at Sotheby’s for $1,8 million to gift it to then-President Viktor Yanukovych.