Aivazovsky was a celebrated painter of seascapes. The artist’s affinity for the ocean began in his birthplace, the Black Sea port of Feodosia (Theodosia) in Crimea, then part of the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine. As a member of the city’s longstanding Armenian community, Aivazovsky had a rich cultural and linguistic background. He worked and exhibited widely, including in cities in Armenia, Georgia, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and mainland Ukraine. In 1892, he visited the United States. This miniature was presumably a gift to Isabel Hapgood, an author and a translator of French and Russian literature, during Aivazovsky’s trip to New York. Hapgood gave the miniature to The Met in 1913.
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Aivazovsky was born in the Crimea and studied at the academy in St. Petersburg, of which he later became a member. He traveled widely, visiting Italy, Asia Minor, the Greek Islands, and the United States. He was a prolific and extremely talented marine and landscape painter.
The donor’s visiting card, much larger than this seascape, is kept with the miniature. It was presumably painted as a gift in recognition of Isabel Hapgood's hospitality when the artist visited the United States. Aivazovsky's View of New York (1893) was sold at Christie's, London, October 5, 1989, no. 247.
[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]
Inscription: Signed (lower right, in black): A; inscribed (reverse, in ink): Aivasovsky / 1892.
Isabel F. Hapgood (1892?–1913; probably given to her by the artist)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 217.
Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, p. 170, no. 217, ill. p. 171.
Aivazovsky was a self-identified Armenian and a subject of the Russian Empire who resided largely in Crimea, which is now part of Ukraine, and who lived and worked on the Ukrainian mainland in 1854–56, during the Crimean War. His national identities are complex. The Department of European Paintings currently describes Aivazovsky as “Armenian, born Russian Empire [now Ukraine],” to reflect the multiple and intersecting nationalities identified in scholarship on the artist.
On Aivazovsky’s national identities, see: Gianni Caffiero and Ivan Samarine, Light, Water, and Sky: The Paintings of Ivan Aivazovsky, London, 2012, pp. 20, 45–46; Shahen Khach'atryan, Айвазовский, известный и неизвестный / Aivazovsky, Well-known and Unknown, Samara, 2012, pp. 31–33, 36, 42–43; Grigory Goldovsky in Ivan Aivazovsky: On the 200th Anniversary of the Artist's Birth, St. Petersburg, 2016, p. 10; Vazken Khatchig Davidian, “Image of an Atrocity: Ivan (Hovhannes) Aivazovsky’s Massacre of the Armenians in Trebizond 1895,” Etudes arméniennes contemporaines 11 (2018), p. 47; and Andrey Kurkov et al., Treasures of Ukraine: A Nation’s Cultural Heritage, London, 2022, p. 144.
Aivazovsky signed his works in Armenian, Russian, and Latin script. The English transliteration of his Armenian name is Hovhannes Aivazian. The Russian form of his name is commonly transliterated into English as Ivan Aivazovsky, but multiple other spellings exist. The artist himself used Aivazovsky, Aivasovsky, and Aivasowsky.
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![A Ship in a Stormy Sea, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (Hovhannes Aivazian) (Armenian, born Russian Empire [now Ukraine], Feodosia (Theodosia) 1817–1900 Feodosia (Theodosia)), Card](/Rodan/dist/svg/rolling-0.9s-30px.svg)
